Defenders of the Altverse, Ep 01: In Lovers' Meeting
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: Rose glanced up at him, her expression inscrutable; he wondered if she felt it, too, that uncomfortable quiet, the strange battling senses of loss and simultaneous gain, the impression that everything was hurtling and stopping and freezing and burning all at once. (A suffocating freedom, he thought, brimming with a terrifying potential energy.) - A rewrite for gingergallifreyan.
1. Chapter 1

And just like that–she was gone.

The Doctor stared at the nothing-space where the TARDIS stood just seconds before, as if maybe–just maybe–if he looked hard enough, long enough, he might be able to detect something of her presence. But the TARDIS had vanished, not a drop of seawater or grain of sand disturbed in her wake. The cold ground where she once stood was impressionless, impassive, betraying nothing. Hollow, like the place deep inside his ribs, a gnawing-hungry feeling suspiciously close to where a second heart used to beat. As if the TARDIS was never even there.

Welp, he thought numbly. That was hardly the only thing that felt like it never happened, like it belonged to the never-was.

His eyes squeezed shut and slowly reopened, a silent wish that things might look different on the other side (fuller, maybe. Better), but they didn't; of course they didn't. The grey water and dull grey sand and duller grey sky still glared back at him, cold and dismissive beneath the cruel brightness of the white-hot sun. Or maybe that was just these fresh new human eyes, awfully tender for all that the world seemed blunted at the edges now. At any rate, the TARDIS was still gone, for four whole seconds–five, now, now six, now seven, and at least his time-sense hadn't completely deserted him, even if it was trying to fade away like the traces of a lingering morning dream–and he was still there.

_This is the beginning of the rest of your life_, he thought, and tried not to feel queasy.

Rose hadn't moved. Her feet had planted her several steps away, more than an arms'-length in front of him, and she seemed to have taken up root there. The Doctor could only presume she was staring at the TARDIS-empty-spot just like he was.

("Are you all right?" he almost asked, but didn't. It was sort of a stupid question. He was a little afraid of the answer, anyway.)

But even with her back to him, the sight of Rose relaxed some of the tension from the Doctor's shoulders and eased the sick feeling in his gut. How could it not? As new and different and terrifying as all of this was, as much as the loss of the TARDIS shocked him like the loss of a limb, it couldn't really be all that bad, could it? Not when Rose was there, and safe, and with him. For however long they had. Together.

(It was all still raw and frightening and new, of course, but it was far better with two–always better with her.)

Stepping in close, he reached for her hand, stifling a sigh of relief when her fingers closed around his, slotting together like the teeth of a zipper. Years apart and it was still so easy, so comfortable, a perfect fit. Second-nature like breathing, respiratory bypass or not. Rose glanced up at him, her expression inscrutable; he wondered if she felt it, too, that uncomfortable quiet, the strange battling senses of loss and simultaneous gain, the impression that everything was hurtling and stopping and freezing and burning all at once. (A suffocating freedom, he thought, brimming with a terrifying potential energy.) Maybe he could help ease that for her, the way she always did for him.

Good grief, but he felt glad to be with her. He wouldn't change his choice for anything.

"So," said the Doctor, his voice soft. "What's next?"

* * *

For what felt like the hundredth time, Rose's mobile chirped a cheerful tune in her pocket, and she suppressed an impatient sigh. Normally she appreciated this universe's capability for inflight calls–dead handy for missions, it was–but right now, she would have given just about anything to have a mobile that _didn't_ work on an airplane.

She ended the call without so much as a glance, staring out the window at the world crawling by below. Through cottonball clouds, Rose could just make out the shapes of green countryside, interrupted by a silver snake of a road here, the blue-grey twinkling of a lake there, and distantly, she resented it all. It just seemed awfully mean-spirited of nature to keep marching onward like this, sun shining and clouds sailing and earth turning as if it all hadn't come so perilously close to ending only hours before, like nothing was ever wrong, like nothing in the world had ever changed.

(But that was sort of the problem, wasn't it? That nothing had changed. Not really.)

A lifetime ago, Rose would have easily fallen asleep like this, lured to slumber by the numbing buzz of the engines or the rumble of a tram on the track or the gentle background hum of the TARDIS. But she had no such luck now, no matter how comfortable the plush first-class seat may have been, how tiredly her bones may have settled into it. Sleep was evasive even on the best of days, anymore–not to mention that the usual noise of plane's-engines was nearly lost amidst the excited chatter of celebrating passengers. News of the canceled apocalypse must have spread quickly; they'd barely been back in this universe for a handful of hours and already folks were celebrating the return of the stars wheeling overhead, joyous celebration spreading like wildfire from the beach to the streets to the airport to the plane. The flight attendants were in such high spirits that they'd started handing out free mini-bottles of liquor left and right, and all around them, passengers laughed and chattered and cried in happiness and relief.

Jackie, of course, had immediately joined the celebrations.

Pink-cheeked and giggling over her (third? fourth?) tiny bottle of fizz, Jackie gaily chatted at the metacrisis-Doctor-or the man who said he was the Doctor, or the new Doctor, half-Doctor, semi-Doctor, something-very-nearly-almost-Doctor, whoever or whatever he was-and silently, Rose was very glad, because this gave Jackie something very concrete to focus her inebriated attention on, something that was not Rose, or Rose's strangely quiet demeanor, or Rose's distant stare, or _why aren't you happy like everyone else, Rose?_ The last thing Rose wanted right now was her mum abandoning her good mood to fret and fuss over her. (Well, no, the last thing Rose_actually_ wanted right now was exactly what she got, but it wasn't like she had a choice in the matter, was it?) At any rate, the sort-of Doctor put up with Jackie good-naturedly enough, chuckling at the appropriate moments, humming agreement here, nodding there. It would have made Rose smile if he had been the other Doctor. _The real Doctor_, she reminded herself.

Rose tried not to hear his voice. A difficult task, as he sat right next to her, so close she could feel the warmth of his leg almost-pressed against hers, inescapably close and frustratingly real. And really, Rose just wished she could open up the emergency hatch and jump out. She didn't care about how silly or melodramatic that sounded. Every word the almost-Doctor spoke was a stabbing pain in her ears, a grotesquely unfair reminder of the nearly-was.

She could still taste him on her lips, the not-quite-Doctor. Soft and sweet and surprisingly human, tinged with salt from the ocean spray on the wind. Rose couldn't lie–it was a nice kiss. A _very _nice kiss. Wonderful, even. Hit all the right notes, made her stomach flutter and heart stammer and chest swell and head swim while little heavenly choirs erupted in song in the back of her mind. And when he'd clutched her close, with a grip that bordered on the desperate, it was all she could do to keep her legs from turning to jelly.

Fine. A perfect kiss, then.

But the grind and groan of the disappearing TARDIS had ruined all of that worse than a slap to the face. Funny how one of the best moments of your life can so quickly devolve into one of the worst, isn't it?

_Typical,_ she thought with a grimace. Things with the real Doctor were never what you thought they were, even if his boyish charm and that stupid pretty smile of his all worked overtime to convince you otherwise. It was a good mask; one could almost believe his carefree performance. And it was certainly very _him_ to let all of this happen–let her kiss the sort-of Doctor as a distraction, so he could slip away unnoticed. No questions or self-doubt or second thoughts, no room for lingering looks or completed confessions or wondering why.

He didn't even say goodbye, this time.

As discreetly as she could, Rose brushed her thumb over her bottom lip, wiping away all traces of the nearly-Doctor there. If Mickey were there, he would have teased her about sending mixed signals, would have joked about how now the Doctor knew exactly how he used to feel.

_If Mickey were there._

Rose suddenly felt like she might be sick.

Shifting in her seat, Rose grimaced, every movement recalling the bruises and aches sustained over the last few days. A hand gently covered hers, and without even looking, without even thinking, Rose knew it was him. The not-Doctor. The touch of him was warm-reassuring, almost, except he was so much warmer than the proper Doctor-and she froze, trapped between the urge to pull her hand away and the desire to press their palms close and never let go.

"Rose?" the Doctor said quietly, beneath the sounds of her mother's nonstop nattering in the background. With no small amount of effort, Rose forced her gaze away from the window, looking his way, and–god, he looked just like him. Same body, same face, same wild hair and questioning eyes and expressive mouth and ridiculous sideburns and stupid concern written in the wrinkles between his eyebrows. He was identical to every last freckle, right down to the dusting of them on the back of his hand, the one curled around hers. Rose couldn't have gotten a more authentic copy if she'd tried.

All that time searching the multiverse, all that work, and this was what she got? _Thanks for playing, but the real Doctor's in another castle?_

(Except the man beside her _was_ the real Doctor, or his real memories anyway, all 900-something years of him sewn up into a brand-new human suit. Rose could feel the rightness of him like she used to feel the undercurrent of the TARDIS, like she once heard the song of the Vortex. But he wasn't real. He just wasn't. He couldn't be. Because if he was–)

"Feeling alright, there?" asked the Doctor.

Rose shook herself. "Yeah," she murmured. "I'm fine. It's just…"

"A lot to take in?"

She nodded. This, at least, was comforting; no need to lie if he chose her words for her.

The Doctor squeezed her hand. "But stuck together, that's not so bad. Right?"

A smile threatened to quirk the corners of Rose's mouth before she reminded herself with a tensing jaw that no,_ no_, that memory wasn't really his, he didn't hear those words, not with those ears anyway, and he didn't have a right to say them. Never mind that her treacherous skin seemed hellbent on believing his fingers twined with hers, that the press of their hands together was all at once so startlingly foreign and intimately familiar that Rose wanted to scream.

"So why's there two of you again?" asked Jackie, and quick as a blink, the new Doctor pulled away from Rose, leaving her both relieved and strangely cold. "Are you a clone, or what?"

"Biological metacrisis, actually," the Doctor replied with a grin. "See, that blast from the Dalek was deadly–sort of hate to admit it, but he got me good, definitely would have bragged about it to all his little Dalek mates back home, given the chance–and, like it does, my other body started trying to regenerate. But I didn't want to give up that body or face so soon, and well, can you blame me?" (Here he threw Rose a wink, and she furiously refused to blush.)

"So I retained the energy needed to repair the damaged tissues and siphoned out the remaining regenerate material into a biological vessel, being this hand here, my handy spare hand, handily preserved in a biomatter containment unit nearby. Add a little tactile contact from someone steeped in Huon energy at precisely the optimum moment post-trauma, and hey-presto! There's me, the same me, just in a new body, growth sped up a billion times by the rapid cell duplication enabled by that special patented Time Lord triple-helix deoxyribonucleic acid. Brilliant regeneration theory, if I do say so myself." He beamed at Jackie. "And I do say so!"

Jackie stared at him blankly. "So…are you a clone, or what?"

He sighed. "I grew out of a hand."

"Huh. Not the worst place a bloke could come from, I s'pose," Jackie mused. "And I'd know a little something about that. Been with men from all over, mind you don't tell Pete that. Men's egos are such fragile things. No offense, Doctor."

"None taken."

"However it happened, you're here, or some version of you anyway, and that means Rose is here, and I can't say I'm not happy about that. Did you know she was going to up and leave me here? Completely deserted and all alone?"

"Except for Tony and Pete and all your friends," Rose said quietly.

"I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the crisis-Doctor-thing," Jackie sniffed, sipping her fizz. "Thirty-six hours I was in labor with her," she says to the Doctor, "raised her all by myself, no help from anyone, got her through school and all manner of terrible boys and that nasty little funk she fell into after we came over here to this universe, and she was just gonna desert me without so much as a by-your-leave, just skip away into the sunset with some _bloke_. No offense, Doctor."

"None taken," he said, reasonably.

"She was gonna go running right back to the other universe and leave everything here behind. Not a second thought about her family or her job or her old mum, how much she might like to be taken along back home."

Rose clenched her fists in an effort to stop herself from rising to the bait. It would be too easy to fall back into this conversation, the same way a needle slips into the well-worn grooves of an oft-played record. _This is your home now, Mum. You have everything and everyone you ever wanted here, Mum. _You're_happy, Mum._

_And you're gonna tell me you've never been happy here?_ Jackie would always reply. _You gonna sit there and act like you never had the chance? _Of course Rose never had a proper answer for her. Nothing that wasn't at least a little bit of a lie.

Jackie leaned forward to shoot Rose a dirty look. "I knew straight-off just how fishy it was, you taking on that UNIT job."

"Oh, so this universe has got a UNIT as well?" the Doctor asked Rose, pleasantly surprised. "And you're with them now? Excellent. Whatever happened to Torchwood?"

"It got absorbed," Jackie replied before Rose had a chance. Just as well; Rose didn't particularly feel like answering, anyway. "UNIT, Torchwood, it's all the same thing, now. And I dunno what Miss over here'll do now that she got what she needed out of it. Only took the job in the first place so she could leave me for_ him._"

"It wasn't like that, Mum," Rose mumbled as the Doctor shifted uncomfortably next to her. A familiar ache was creeping into her head and she tiredly massaged her temples, willing it to go away. Didn't she already feel bad enough? "I had to get hold of the Doctor. He was the only one who could stop the stars going out. You know that."

"Just left the family and me behind like so much rubbish. Her poor old mum, victimized by some mad alien cradle-robber. No offense, Doctor."

"Erm…none taken?"

"What if I hadn't gone after you, eh?" Jackie asked Rose, her words punctuated with a wet hiccup. "Would you really have let your brother grow up without his sister, never understanding where she went, never knowing why? What if this one hadn't come along?" she needled, slapping the Doctor's arm. Ignoring his jump of surprise, she continued, "You wouldn't have even given it a second thought, would you? Cos nothing else matters to you, does it? You would have left everything behind for the _real _Doctor."

At that, the Doctor stiffened, as if his entire body was saying what his mouth wouldn't–_offense very much taken_.

"Life isn't some fairytale, you know," said Jackie, and Rose bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snapping back at her. "Dropping everything for your one true love is all good and well in a storybook, but real life doesn't work like that. In real life, you've got friends, and a family, and a job and a home and a community and a mum who already lost you for a year and she can't do it again, she really can't. In real life, people get hurt, Rose."

Guilt weighing heavy in the pit of her stomach, churning sickly in her gut, Rose stared back out the window, eyes gliding over grey clouds swollen dark with rainwater. Grey, grey, grey, never-ending, infinite, unchanging, the same as it always had been, always would be, day after day after day _after day_.

"I was just trying to get back to him," she muttered.

"Well," said the Doctor, shifting in his seat, "Good thing I'm right here, then."

"You're not, though."

Silence fell between them, heavy and tense; Rose chanced a look at the Doctor and immediately regretted it. She couldn't hold his gaze for long, couldn't bear the confusion flashing across his face. "You're not him, I mean," she muttered.

The Doctor shook his head, lips parting, but before he could let loose any sort of argument, Rose continued, "I know you've got his face and his memories and everything, but…I'm sorry. You're not the same. You're not him. You're just not."

"I am, though. I'm still me. Just me in a different body. A new body. New new body. New new Doctor," he said with an encouraging smile.

Rose looked away.

"Rose, we went through all of this before, last time I changed."

"This is different."

"How?"

"It just is," she insisted stubbornly, still not looking at him, even if she could feel his gaze weighing on her.

The new Doctor quirked an eyebrow in bewilderment. "Rose–"

Her mobile chose that moment to start ringing again, the ringtone filling the cabin with its obliviously cheerful chirp. Secretly grateful for the interruption just this once, Rose slipped it out of her pocket, turning away to answer.

"Agent Tyler."

"So she lives, after all!" her boss barked on the other end. "I've been ringing you for days, Tyler. _Days_. Do you know what bloody day it is?"

"No," Rose replied truthfully.

"Well then, allow me to assist: today is the day I fire your arse if it's not planted in my office in the next ten minutes. Does that ring a bell, Agent Tyler?"

Rose bit her lip. "I'm sort of in Norway right now."

The other end fell quiet. Then, perplexed, "…and you're in Norway because…?"

"Long story."

"You can tell it when you get here, then. And I want you here straightaway, understand? And Smith too. Can't get hold of him for the life of me. Actually, put him on the line, will you?"

Rose's eyes pinched shut. "He's–he's not available, right now."

"_Not available_," Oliver huffed. "Unbelievable, the both of you. Just-get to my office, all right? No delays, no excuses, just get here. Got it?"

"Got it," Rose repeated, the words toneless and flat, empty of anything resembling enthusiasm. She hung up without a goodbye or anything else; she wasn't sure how she was supposed to explain what really happened to Mickey.

She flinched at the feel of her mother glaring at her around the Doctor. "God, Mum. What now?"

"Don't tell me you're planning to run back to that institution first thing," Jackie shot back. "It's gonna be half past eleven by the time you get back, and you need a proper rest. And a good meal. And a bath, I'd wager. When's the last time you slept, anyway?"

"I've got to go. It's work." Rose risked another look at the half-Doctor, who was watching her with something that looked suspiciously like concern. She stared at her hands in her lap instead. "Besides, I can sleep on the way."

Jackie just scowled before settling back into her seat, resigned, arms crossed over her chest. "All right, sweetheart. If that's what you want."

No, Rose thought as she leaned against the window, her forehead pressed to the blessedly cool plexiglass. No, it wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want to go back to UNIT. She didn't want to be trapped on this airplane, barred from the aisle by the almost-Doctor and caged-in by her mum. She didn't want to be stuck back in this stupid bloody universe at all. And she absolutely couldn't _believe_ how cavalier the sort-of Doctor was acting about the whole thing. Or maybe that attitude of his just proved he was who he said he was, after all.

She swallowed around the lump that had sprung up in her throat. She resolutely did not think about what the man beside her had whispered in her ear, back on the beach–words the real Doctor had never spoken. And likely never would have, Rose realized, as pressure expanded in her sinuses. Her head ached with the need to release the moisture swelling up behind her eyes, but she furiously blinked the would-be tears away, forcing them back and cursing herself for being so pathetic.

What a waste of so much hard work. What a waste of so much trying and waiting and watching and hoping. Just what a _waste_.

Although, if she thought about it…

The pain in her head faded to a dull thrum as she realized–

…_it didn't have to be_.

Watching the clouds crawl by below, glowing an eerie white with flashes of lightning here and there, Rose lost herself in thought. Theoretically, it could work, right? Everything was still in place, back at home. And preliminary testing had yielded positive results. So there was a chance, however implausible, however slight, that she could still change things. She could give herself the chance she deserved. The _choice_ she had earned.

Besides. Rose Tyler wasn't the sort to give up just because someone else told her to.

The first stirrings of a plan started to knit themselves together as Rose watched the storm building below.


	2. Chapter 2

He still wasn't sure he believed it.

"UNIT in this universe is stationed inside Big Ben," said the Doctor, slowly, staring up, up, up at the tower looming over him. "UNIT works inside _Big Ben_."

No one replied to this revelation, not that he expected anyone to; the sheer wall of noise around him was enough to mask any words that weren't spoken with a shout. From the moment the Doctor and Rose and Jackie had landed in London (or Other London, as the Doctor liked to think of it), they'd been buffeted on all sides by wave after wave of delighted partiers, people of all kinds celebrating the return of the stars overhead. Along the streets and curbs and alleyways, everywhere they turned, folks flooded the place, waving flags and balloons and noisemakers, singing and dancing and chanting and hugging and shouting and cheering. The celebration was worldwide, it seemed; it had followed them every step of the way from the beach to UNIT, which, the Doctor could not stress enough, _was stationed directly inside none other than Big-bleeding-Ben_.

This universe may have some potential yet.

"_Oh_, that feels good," the Doctor groaned, stretching his arms til his shoulders let out a satisfying _pop_. Taxis and planes were rubbish things, he had decided. Why did terrestrial travel have to take place so slowly? And why did everything else have to happen so slowly, for that matter? Waiting for the taxi, riding to the airport, waiting in traffic, pre-boarding, waiting, boarding, waiting, listening to the safety presentation, finally flying, circling, landing, waiting, waiting, waiting, _waiting_, just what was humanity's preoccupation with waiting, anyway? Was this what he had to look forward to, from now on? Halting in his tracks while time crawled on around him, holding still while other people made things happen? Just _waiting_?

This, he thought for the umpteenth time, was all going to take some getting used to.

Shutting off that line of thought—he would, he suspected, have all too much time to explore it in agonizing depth sometime later—the Doctor wriggled his toes and arched his back and wedged his hands in his pockets and felt very glad to be outside of a plane or taxi or any other horrid traveling metal-thing, very glad, indeed. Not only was his tall and fidgety self horribly cramped on the flight, but it had been rather awkward stuck between feuding mother and daughter, caught in the crossfire of their silent Cold War. And that was uncomfortable even before all this talk of _the real Doctor_ started coming up.

(And said with such bite, too, and was that venom in his bloodstream…?)

The Doctor shook his head. Nope, nope, couldn't think about that either. He needed a distraction. Just like he'd needed in the taxi, but the driver had proved worthless on that front, stoically responding with a series of noncommittal _hm's _and _yup's _to everything the Doctor said. He wondered if all the cabbies in this universe were so decisively monosyllabic, or if his small-talk skills had just gotten rusty. (Not that he could be blamed if they didn't find astronomical phenomena or molecular structure or advanced quantum theory to be fascinating. Just what did they discuss at dinner parties, over here?)

The Doctor glanced back at the cab and the cabbie where he'd left them, his gaze wandering idly over to Jackie afterward, then to Rose. She stared at her mobile, frowning. Neither she nor Jackie had any money on hand—not like it would have done them any good jumping over to the other universe, would it?—and while the plane tickets had been easy enough to procure with a simple phone call, the payment for their taxi ride was turning out to be a little more complicated. (This universe didn't seem to have mobile payments widely enabled yet; maybe in a year or two, the Doctor thought.) Probably they should have just waited for the town car or someone from UNIT, but Rose seemed too impatient to wait that long. The Doctor wondered at that.

Rose looked up from her mobile and the Doctor quickly glanced away, heart pounding just a little harder, though he wasn't totally certain why.

It was an odd sensation, the single heart; he wasn't too fond of the experience in Shakespeare's age and he didn't like it any better now. But at least the taxi-ride from the airport had presented a good opportunity to direct his focus inward and familiarize himself with this and other aspects of his new body—he hadn't really had a good chance to do it before, what with being too busy saving the universe again and all—and he was pleased to note that aside from the obvious cardiac differences, much of his biological makeup was still the same, or near enough.

Hands? Check. Feet? Two. Fingers? Operational. Hair? Great hair. Still wasn't ginger, though. And really, you'd think his new body would have at least had the courtesy to adopt some ginger-genes along with all of the other nonsense it had borrowed from Donna.

Oh, no. _Donna_.

He wondered how long she had before—

_No_. That didn't bear thinking about right now. That didn't bear thinking about _ever_.

The new respiratory system! That was good, that was a much better thing to think about. His new respiratory system was rubbish. The lack of a bypass was definitely going to cause him trouble. He could imagine his bronchial tubes seizing up during a run, throat burning, eyes stinging, legs aching, lungs emptying of oxygen faster than he could replenish them. That sounded like fun, not a silly aspect of human existence at all.

He was at least satisfied to note that many of his senses were still fully intact, fresh-peeled and sharp and absolutely raring to overload him with sensory input. Ocular and olfactory capabilities were excellent as ever, even if his vomeronasal organ was now essentially rendered vestigial. His gustatory potential had yet to be tested, and that would need to take place sooner rather than later, if that growling, gnawing feeling behind his ribs was anything to go by. And he still had that extra-heightened tactile sense that commonly accompanied regeneration. Then there was the quieting of his time sense, both a blessing and a curse. It was a bit, he suspected, like riding in a car without a seatbelt; certainly more comfortable, but also dangerous and hilariously ill-advised. Ultimately that also didn't bear thinking about either and was thus shoved back into the darker recesses of his brain, along with all the other million things screaming for his attention even as he firmly closed the door on them.

But the heart—he couldn't ignore that. For one thing, his chest felt oddly empty without the dual heartsbeat, but the Doctor suspected that some other human bits had taken up too much room for the binary system, his insides all crowded up by a series of strange organs he hadn't needed before. Tonsils and gallbladder and plica semilunaris and appendix and really, what was that all about? He reminded himself to get rid of the appendix as soon as possible, nasty thing.

But despite the loss of his second pulse, at times his single heart seemed determined to make up the difference, especially where Rose was concerned. That was new. She had always captured his attention with alarming ease, to be certain, but this was…different. The Doctor's pulse had galloped to a frenzy when Rose placed her hand on his chest, back on the beach; when she pulled him in for the kiss, it had damn well skyrocketed. (During the kiss, he wasn't actually sure what his heart was doing, because his mind went strangely blank, unable to focus on anything that wasn't the feel of Rose's arms around his neck or her lips pressed to his or the hints of warmth and moisture exchanged between them.) The sensation was pleasant enough—all right, so it was good—all right, so it was _brilliant_—but the Doctor did not overly appreciate his body reacting to stimuli without his approval. It made him feel powerless and untethered, a lumbering idiot drunk on a cocktail of new hormones and pheromones and other strange human things that didn't make sense yet.

Speaking of which.

Fidgeting in discomfort, the Doctor shuffled his shoes against the ground, his plimsolls encountering something with a _crunch_. The Doctor rolled his eyes, privately scolding these humans and their tendency to just leave rubbish lying around like so much-well, _rubbish_-but when he leaned over to pick up the offending item, he frowned. Amidst the rubbish of discarded party cups and beer-bottles and confetti and limp balloon carcasses half-stamped to oblivion beneath the crowd's many feet, the Doctor spotted something that looked an awful lot like a protest sign, its message no worse the wear for all that the sign was now crumpled and soggy. _The end is nigh_, the sign read in large, ominous letters. _Do not fight. Surrender and repent._

Curious. The Doctor cocked his head, eyes narrowing like maybe if he stared hard enough, he could make sense of this sentiment. He could only imagine this was some bizarre quasi-religious reaction to the disappearance of the stars overhead, though why anyone would embrace such a nihilistic viewpoint was beyond him. (Human religion, he decided, was one activity he would not be partaking in. No, ta.) He added it to the list of things he'd have to ask Rose about later.

"Oh, look, Rose. There he is!"

The Doctor's head jerked instinctively at the familiar voice rising over the rabble, and he glanced over to see Jackie waving excitedly at someone behind him. He turned to find Pete Tyler emerging from UNIT, looking, perhaps, a little plumper but certainly a lot better than he had the last time the Doctor laid eyes on him, even if he was scanning the crowd with an intensity that bordered on the frantic.

"Pete!" Jackie shouted. "Over here, love!"

Spotting Jackie, Pete instantly relaxed; even from here, the Doctor could spot the tension melting from him. He waved back at Jackie, the two of them laughing as they waded through the crowd, their walk turning to a jog and then a sprint until the two of them collided in the middle in a mess of limbs, arms wrapping around each other like the coils of a spring. Whooping, Pete lifted Jackie off the ground, spinning her round and round heedless of the crowd seething around them, only to be pulled in by Jackie the second he set her down so she could pepper his face with kisses. They were totally oblivious to the noise and commotion around them, a tiny island in the midst of a sea at high tide, exchanging more hugs and kisses and whispered _hello's_ and broad, joyful smiles. It tugged at something deep in the Doctor's gut. If he didn't know any better, he'd be tempted to label the feeling something like _longing_.

(He tried to shake it away but couldn't dislodge the memory of turning to see Rose on that darkened street. The way everything fell silent around them, the way she smiled like the sun when their gazes met, the way the world stopped turning beneath him—he wouldn't ever forget that, in this body or any other. Was there a universe where they'd made their way to each other like Jackie and Pete—was there a universe where he didn't feel like a stranger in his own body, where Rose didn't keep looking at him like she wished he was someone else?)

_Don't be stupid_, he chided himself. He did _not _envy Jackie and Pete. No way, no-how. There was no way things had gotten that bad. That conversation on the plane was just an anomaly, that was all. Just the byproduct of exhaustion after a period of intense stress. Only to be expected. Soon enough, things would slide back into normalcy. Rose wasn't the type to hold onto anger; compassion and forgiveness and understanding and stubborn resilience were ingrained in her nature every bit as deeply as things like blinking and breathing. Besides, this wasn't really any different from the last time he'd changed. Apart from the obvious differences.

Temporary. This was all temporary. He just needed to give her a little bit of time. A little time to rest, recover, recuperate. That was understandable. Yes. He could do that. It wouldn't take long, knowing her. In the meantime-well, in the meantime, he just had to act normal. Just be himself. Isn't that what all the platitudinous children's-films cheerfully chirped? _Just be yourself. _He could do that.

(…right?)

"They seem happy," said the Doctor as Rose approached, her gaze locked wearily on her parents. "They are happy, right?"

Rose nodded. "Yeah," she said. "They are."

"Good. Very good. So things are going well, here in the new universe?"

"For them, yeah."

The Doctor fought not to fidget. "And for you?"

Rose did not reply.

"All right there, mate?" said Pete, pulling Jackie along with his arm draped over her shoulders, hers cinched snugly about his waist. He held out his free hand for the Doctor to shake, and the Doctor accepted. "So the world didn't end after all-had a feeling you might have been involved."

"Might've been," said the Doctor, grinning.

"Oi!" piped up Jackie, swatting Pete's chest good-naturedly. "Rose and me had something to do with it, too!"

"I know, love," Pete laughed, and he drew Jackie close so he could kiss the top of her head. The Doctor wondered if he'd ever seen either of them quite so soft. It suited them.

"God, I'm knackered," said Jackie with a contented sigh. "We're off for a good night's rest. Or as good as Tony'll let us get, anyway. He's up at five in the morning, sometimes, ready to play! And if the nursery gave him any sugar, oh, Lord have mercy on us all…"

Shaking her head in exasperation, Jackie sighed again. "Anyway," she said to Rose. "Don't stay out too late, yeah? I worry."

"I know, Mum," Rose mumbled, but allowed Jackie to pull her in for a hug anyway. (The Doctor grudgingly permitted a hug from Jackie as well, but only grudgingly.) Moments later, the taxi was gone, Jackie and Pete with it. That left the Doctor alone with Rose for the first time in—well, in years.

It was decidedly awkward.

"So this is London on the other side, then?" the Doctor asked, gazing up at the zeppelins drifting lazily over the skyscrapers. He shielded his eyes from the too-bright light of the streetlamps. He couldn't help but feel like Superman on kryptonite, his senses as raw as they were. Or, no. He grimaced inwardly. Superman was too much of a boring goody-goody. He was more like Wonder Woman. Eh, he didn't fancy wearing a girdle. That left Batman. Yes, Batman was a good choice. He liked Batman. All dark and broody and too smart for his own good.

Rose was staring at him.

"What?" he said.

"Just said _Yeah_," she replied with a shrug, shoving her hands in her jacket-pockets.

"Right, right."

They both stood for a moment, silent amongst the noise carrying on around them. Rose avoided his gaze.

"Still, looks about the same, doesn't it?" the Doctor said. "Same old London, same old world. Except for the zeppelins."

"Mmm."

"Shall we go in, then?"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "You're coming in with me?"

"Well, the taxi is gone, so…am I not?" asked the Doctor, confused. What else was he supposed to do while she was at work? Discover more horrible new squishy human body parts? Play horrible-squishy-human-body-part bingo?

With a sigh, Rose shook her head. "Fine. Do whatever you like. Just don't—"

"Wander off?" the Doctor finished with a grin. A hint of a smile crept into her eyes, and the Doctor grinned at her hopefully. "Rule number one," he said, and her smile deepened a little bit more.

"Was that a smile?" the Doctor teased.

"No."

"That was a smile."

"No it wasn't," Rose mumbled, turning to leave.

"Whatever you say," said the Doctor, smirking as he followed her through the crowd. "So, off to work. What do we do first? File a report? Fill out some paperwork? _Saved the universe again, requesting per diem_, that sort of thing?"

"No," said Rose with a heavy exhale. "First I deal with my boss."

* * *

"What do you mean, Smith's not coming back?" Oliver demanded, shouting over the roar of caretakers vacuuming the corridor outside his office. When Rose couldn't find the words to reply, offering only a limp shrug in response, Oliver leaned back in his chair with a long-suffering sigh, hands scrubbing his face. "This is an administrative nightmare," he muttered, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. "What am I supposed to say on the paperwork? You can't just decide to stay in a whole other universe without even saying—I mean, who _does_ that? Who in the hell just up and does something like that?"

Rose could sense the Doctor glancing her way at that; god, she wished he wouldn't. Why had she allowed him in here with her, again?

"His gran passed a while back," Rose replied, staring at the wall behind Oliver's head, at the caretakers working behind the glass. "Didn't really have anything to come back to, after that."

"And neither of you thought to tell me about this before he left?"

_I didn't think I would be coming back either_, Rose thought dully, but before she had a chance to pipe up, the Doctor stepped in with, "It struck me as something of a last-minute decision, personally. Less of a plan, more of an impulse. You know how humans are, making life-altering, world-making decisions on a whim. It's sort of admirable, really, if perpetually frustrating."

Oliver stared at him. "Who is this supposed to be?" he asked Rose. "And why does he look like that Doctor bloke you used to prattle on about all the time?"

"Ooh, all the time, eh?" said the Doctor, beaming at Rose, who fervently wished a black hole would spring up and swallow her. "_All the time_. I'll remember that for later."

He leaned over the desk to offer Oliver a handshake. "Hello! I am indeed the Doctor."

"Sort of," muttered Rose under her breath.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," the Doctor continued, as if he hadn't heard her.

Oliver accepted his handshake. "Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver Barnes, Senior UNIT Administrator. Why is he here?" he asked Rose.

"It's…complicated."

"So you said on the phone. Care to elaborate?"

"It was a semi-regenerative metacrisis event—" the Doctor started, but a sharp glance from Rose shut him up.

"Look—we found the source of the problem and we neutralized it," Rose told Oliver. "Stars are back, crisis is averted, universe saved."

"You're welcome," the Doctor added.

Oliver huffed. "That's all good and well, but it hardly addresses-"

"Look, everything's back to normal now. Isn't that what matters most?"

Eyes narrowing in suspicion, Oliver frowned. "_What matters most_? What's gotten into you? You've never been the type that only cares about the big picture—whatever happened to 'Examine everything, think of everyone'?"

Rose offered another limp shrug in lieu of a response.

"Right," huffed Oliver, inhaling loudly through his nostrils. The heavy breeze set his salt-and-pepper mustache twitching frantically against his dark skin; Rose knew he was trying to engage the standard calming technique taught in all mandatory UNIT wellness sessions. Trying—not necessary succeeding. "So the last few days, you've just been hijacking equipment, jumping universes without authorization, ignoring communications from your senior officer, losing valuable agents, abandoning any semblance of safety standards or proper protocol, and running around with this _sort of the Doctor _bloke, and now—now you won't even offer me the courtesy of a proper explanation _why_?"

Rose stared at the glass behind him, silent.

Muttering beneath his breath in frustration, Oliver rubbed a hand over his receding hairline. Rose imagined he probably blamed her for some of that hair loss; honestly, she couldn't blame him. He glanced up at her, scratching the back of his head. His eyes were weary.

"Tyler…I'm gonna have to let you go," he said, quietly, as if in apology.

Rose did not reply.

"I don't want to. I like you, Tyler. God help me, but I do. You're smart-smart and resourceful. And focused. Driven. Great team player, fantastic team leader. Got a work ethic other bosses would kill for. But you've officially tipped the point where your cons outweigh your pros."

He drew in a deep breath. "You've become a liability."

"Now, hang on a minute," said the Doctor, bristling.

"No, it's okay—" Rose tried to say, tiredly massaging her sore temples, but her words were buried under the Doctor's insistence that "You're lucky to have her here. She probably knows more about extradimensional travel and time-space dynamics and extraterrestrial relations than everyone else here combined!"

"True, and she's also broken more rules, required more hospitalizations, and racked up higher damages that everyone else here combined," Oliver replied coolly.

"Oh," said the Doctor, nonplussed. Then, curiously, "How much in damages?"

"About £53 million."

"Well, good on you!" the Doctor laughed, clapping Rose on the back. "Or no, that's actually quite bad, isn't it?" he asked upon seeing the look on her face.

"The fact is, this was a long time coming," Oliver told Rose, his expression pleading with her to understand. "And I think you know that. Christa turned a blind eye to your shenanigans for years. We all did—your work with extraterrestrials and the jumps and the Cannon, it was brilliant stuff, all of it. And no one could do it quite like you. But you can't keep breaking the rules like this. Your impulses, your split-second decisions, your stubbornness, they make messes that the rest of us are stuck cleaning up, for days, weeks, months after you've moved on. I won't say you don't get good results; you get excellent results, yes, and Pete's donations don't hurt either, but it still isn't fair to the rest of us. You—you understand that, yeah?"

Rose nodded, numb.

"I'm sorry, Tyler," said Oliver, and he looked like he meant it. "But once you get this one into processing, after you've been debriefed…I'm going to have to ask you to pack up your things."

"Okay," she replied softly.

With a frown, Oliver looked her over. "You gonna be all right?"

Rose shrugged, turning to leave. "Doesn't matter."

It was no worse than what she had expected, maybe no worse than what she deserved. She left the office without so much as a backward glance.

"Oliver's a sunny ol' chap, isn't he?" asked the Doctor as he caught up with her.

"He's a good bloke. Best boss I ever had," replied Rose. "Anyway, he's right. I screwed up. A lot. No surprises there, it's what I'm best at."

"Now we both know that's not true."

"Isn't it?"

"Nope," said the Doctor. "It sounds like you were pretty integral to the proceedings here, not to mention you helped build something that safely traversed the untraverseable. Not just anybody could do that, not even me. You made some major contributions to something fairly miraculous."

"Yeah, fat lot of good it did."

"Well, it helped save the multiverse, so I'd call that a fat lot of good."

"Not what I was talking about," Rose muttered.

As they approached the lift, she glanced over to see the Doctor watching her, his brow knit with confusion. "What?" she asked tiredly.

"What were you talking about, then?"

"Nothing," Rose sighed. She punched the button to summon the lift. "Just…nothing. Don't worry about it."

"Well, I'm certainly worried _now_. What were you talking about?"

Rose was starting to regret ever allowing him inside the building with her. Why hadn't she just left him on the curb?

(Silly question; she knew why. She knew exactly why. No matter how much she told herself she didn't.)

"Look, I know four years probably doesn't seem like a very long time to you," she said, carefully avoiding his gaze. "But it's a long time for a human to work so hard for something, only to be told 'No,' and 'Have this other thing instead', and '_Just because I said so_.'"

For a moment the silence between them was disrupted only by the chime of the lift, announcing its approach with a series of cheerful _dings_. "It's not like you came back empty-handed, you know," said the Doctor.

"I shouldn't have come back at all. I should be there, in the TARDIS, with him, but here I am, stuck with _you_."

Looking at him again was a mistake; Rose wasn't sure she'd ever seen that particular brand of kicked-puppy wretchedness on the Doctor's face before. Certainly not because of her. That sick feeling started crawling around inside her gut again and she swallowed against it, steeling herself. Since when did the Doctor allow that sort of emotion to display so openly, anyway? The other Doctor surely would have stormed off or changed the topic by now.

Then in the blink of an eye he shifted, a calm and chipper mask sliding back into place like it had never slipped in the first place. "Welp, I'm sorry you feel that way," the Doctor said cheerfully, and was Rose just imagining it, or did his voice sound a little strained? "But what's done is done, nothing we can do to change it. So we might as well make the best of things, yeah?"

Rose said a silent prayer of thanks as the lift finally arrived; it gave her a good reason not to look him in the eye as she lied. "Yeah," she said. "Sure."

The lift split open and Rose stepped inside, her entire body alight with nerves. "So listen, I've got to go take care of this thing, and I-"

"On your own?"

God, he was making this difficult. "You can't go," she lied. "It's my debriefing. Strictly classified. And you've got to go through processing anyway, take care of your medical inspection and the like."

The Doctor laughed in disbelief. "You're not seriously suggesting that I let UNIT poke and prod and dissect me like some sort of lab animal."

"'Course not. It's nothing like that. It's just for their records and your paperwork."

Disgruntled, the Doctor wrinkled his nose. "I don't think so."

"Okay. Do what you like, it's no difference to me," said Rose as she stepped into the lift. "But I've got to go at any rate. And I'm gonna be a while, so you might as well find something to do to pass the time. Directory's down that way," she said, gesturing, "but the research library's open all night, the cafeteria's still open for the next few minutes if you're hungry-"

"What about you, though? When did you last eat?"

Rose's leg jittered with impatience. "I don't know. A day ago? It's not important. Just-look, you don't need to worry about me, okay? That's not your job."

"On the contrary, worrying about you is very much a full-time job."

He said it like a joke, punctuated with a grin, but was it just Rose's imagination, or was the smile just a little tighter than usual, almost strained…? The urge to reach out and comfort him seized her, making her hand itch to fly out and grab his. She'd block the lift doors so she could pull him in with her, she thought, offering a reassuring hug or an apology or another kiss or just something to ease that tense smile off his face. But Rose stopped herself, punched the button to close the doors faster instead.

"See you later, then," said the Doctor.

_Not if I see you first_, she almost replied, but at the last second Rose bit her tongue to stop the words tumbling out. Just because he looked like the Doctor (and sounded like him, talked like him, thought and remembered and smelled and acted and felt like him too) didn't mean he was. He was just a day-old copy, a clone, a replica; Rose had to hold onto that thought, or else her resolve was going to melt like an ice cube left on a hot summer sidewalk. And she couldn't afford that, not right now. Not if she was going to go through with her plan.

* * *

The Doctor stared without seeing, hands clenched in his pockets, palms damp with nervous sweat. That was another first; he couldn't say he cared for it. Just another way his body seemed hellbent on betraying him at every turn. Probably he'd go into cardiac arrest next, just for the hell of it.

His mind played Rose's words over and over again, round and round and torturing him like the world's most sadistic carousel.

_I should be there, in the TARDIS, with _him_._

_But here I am, stuck with _you_._

The Doctor sighed in frustration. How the hell do you convince someone that you are who you are?

He hadn't anticipated this. Of course he'd known there would be an adjustment period-only to be expected from a species unaccustomed to the revolving-door that was regeneration-and of course he'd suspected that Rose wouldn't be thrilled at things going differently than she'd planned-he'd guessed that would happen, he wasn't _that_ thick. He was aware, and he was somewhat sympathetic, even if this was just the best decision for everyone, in the end. But maybe it had been overly optimistic to think that she would be happy in a universe with no TARDIS and no science-magic and no nigh-immortal cosmic tour guide pulling her from star to star. Perhaps he'd been foolish to think that he, by himself, was enough.

Frustration and hurt simmered in his veins but he forced them away, reminding himself to be patient, for Rose's sake. She just needed time. And understanding. And probably something to eat. And definitely some rest. And-

"'Scuse me? I said, did you need anything before I close up?"

The Doctor shook himself out of his reverie, shifting his focus from the plastic-wrapped food beneath the display glass. He blinked the harsh fluorescent lights out of his eyes, waved their buzz out of his ears. A red-haired dinner lady peered up at him from behind the counter, fanning herself with a folded-up paper plate, smiling a kind smile that lit up her entire face. She could almost pass for a younger Donna, maybe her sister.

(Donna again, and what was going to happen to her, and _how much of it was his fault,_ just like everything else_-?_)

"Ah, no thanks," said the Doctor, offering a pale smile in return. "Turns out I'm not hungry after all."

"Well, you look like you should eat something anyhow. You're so skinny I could probably knock you over with one hard glance."

The Doctor chuckled halfheartedly, and the dinner lady tilted her head, as if he was a puzzle she'd just solved. "Did you leave your wallet at home, love?" she asked, voice laced with sympathy.

"Something like that. Or, actually-"

Rummaging about in his pockets, he procured the psychic paper, glad he'd snuck it out of his old coat at the last second. (Oh no, his coat; he wouldn't see that again, would he? The loss made his stomach hurt. Or maybe that was just his stupidly flawed new body.) He flipped the paper open for the dinner lady to see. "Don't suppose this would do the trick?"

She frowned. "Don't suppose so. Just says you're feeling a little blue."

"Really?" asked the Doctor, impressed. He flipped the paper back round to check. "That's strange, it should be telling you I'm some UNIT higher-up."

"You'll have to try harder than that, I'm afraid. We've all had basic psychic training here. Agent Tyler's orders."

"Would that be Agent Rose Tyler, then?" asked the Doctor, and the dinner lady nodded. The Doctor beamed with pride. "Brilliant."

"You know her?"

"You could say that." He stowed the psychic paper back in his pockets. "So how long have I got before your silent alarm kicks in and some lovely armed soldiers kick me out for 'attempted use of psychic persuasion' or something like that?"

"You'll be waiting a while yet, no one's called them."

"Oh?"

"Nope. Your paper-thing said I should feel sorry for you, not scared of you."

"Did it?" the Doctor chuckled. "Cheeky thing."

With one last longing look at the food beneath the glass (his stomach rumbling in accompaniment, and since when did his body make such nasty burbling noises without his permission? What a horrid experience this whole human hunger thing was), the Doctor offered the dinner lady a wave goodbye. "Sorry for wasting your time. I'll just let you get on with closing up-"

"Wait!"

The Doctor paused. Fanning herself a little harder now, the dinner lady glanced round the cafeteria; upon finding it empty, she jerked her head in the universal sign of_ come closer_, leaning forward conspiratorially as he approached.

"We've probably got some 'damaged goods' I could give you for free, if you know what I mean," the dinner lady said in a low voice. "You know. Stuff that I maybe could have dropped on the floor, or something?"

The Doctor's eyebrow piqued in interest. "Well. It would certainly be a shame to let such perfectly good, mostly unblemished food go to waste, wouldn't it?" he whispered.

"A terrible shame," replied the dinner lady with a grin. "How do you fancy bananas?"

"Ah, a woman after my own heart! I _love _bananas!"

With one last glance around the cafeteria, the dinner lady passed him a banana over the counter, sneaking in a cling-wrapped sandwich as well for good measure. The Doctor pocketed the sandwich for later and started in immediately on the banana, peeling it just enough to get in one big, satisfying bite.

(And oh, was it ever a good bite. His eyes fluttered shut as the scent filled his nose and the flavor filled his mouth, soft and sweet and dense and plush and _a good damn bite, indeed_. Not too soft, not too firm, not too green, not too ripe. Quite possibly one of the best things he'd ever eaten. And the feeling of relief spreading through him was absolutely _divine_. Maybe human hunger wasn't quite so terrible after all, if food was always as satisfying as this.)

Sighing in relief around a mouthful of fruit, the Doctor opened his eyes to find the dinner lady watching him in amusement. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Miranda," said the dinner lady, smiling. But then she paled and the fanning stopped as she pressed one hand to her face, aghast. "Oh no, you're not some sort of secret shopper or anything, are you? I promise I'm not in the habit of giving food away!"

"No, no! Nothing of the sort," said the Doctor, waving the banana reassuringly. In reality he hadn't a clue what a 'secret shopper' might be, but he was fairly confident that he was not one. "I just wanted to say thank you, Miranda."

Miranda's laugh of relief quickly devolved into a cough, which she muffled against her shoulder. "You're welcome," she said, fanning herself again in relief as twin patches of blush blossomed across her cheeks. "Sorry, I'm just a little paranoid is all. Can't afford to lose this job. Got kids at home to take care of, you know? And they ain't cheap!"

"How many kids?"

"Four."

"Four! That's a healthy number."

Miranda smiled sadly. "That's what I said. But my brother always wanted a house full of kids. Probably would have had even more, if he were still with us. Bless his silly soul."

"Oh," said the Doctor, swallowing. "I'm very sorry."

She just continued to fan herself, offering a little shrug in response. "Anyway, it's not like I've got many other options for work. Not that I mind it here," she said quickly, as if she was still afraid that the Doctor might reveal himself to be some sort of retail spy after all. "It's a decent place, decent people, especially after Smith and the Tylers came in."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, they really turned things around for us here at the bottom of the food chain. Pushed for better pay, better benefits and the like. Word has it Mrs. Tyler funded some of it out of her own pocket. It was the funniest thing, actually, I'd always heard Mrs. Tyler was a bit of a mean old bird, but then she finds out some people here aren't making a livable wage and she absolutely _riots_!" Miranda laughed, and coughed into her shoulder again. "I guess it just goes to show, you don't always know people, do ya?"

"No," said the Doctor, softly. "I suppose you don't."

"Anyways, anywhere else, I'd have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Not here, though. Not anymore." Miranda glanced at the Doctor with an uncertain grin. "So, be sure to write that on your secret report-thing, yeah? How much we all like it here?"

"Will do," the Doctor chuckled, and Miranda's grin widened into something genuine.

"See you around?" Miranda asked hopefully.

"Most definitely," replied the Doctor, flashing her his most handsome grin. (Probably the effect was diminished by his mouthful of banana, but oh well.) He polished off more of the fruit as he exited the cafeteria, now deep in thought.

Money. Ugh, that was something he was going to need now, wasn't it? He'd sort of managed his way around it in the past, but without the TARDIS, that wasn't a possibility anymore. Even if he only had one person to support-and he honestly couldn't imagine how Miranda managed to do it for five people, that sounded absolutely bonkers-he was going to have to find a way to make money. He was going to have to get a proper _job_. But before that, he should probably buy a change of clothes. But before that, he would need to confirm he had a place to stay. (He did, didn't he? With Rose? But what if he didn't? Then he'd have to _pay_ for a place to stay. And-)

_And then work for all of those things until you drop dead _crept into his thoughts unbidden. _Because that's what humans do. They work. They eat. They sleep. They die._

"That's a bleak prospect," the Doctor muttered to no one in particular. "Besides, there's plenty to make it all worthwhile. Good things, good food, good people…"

Good _person_, really. But if she wanted nothing to do with him-if that never changed-

The next few decades looked awfully empty without her in them.

(Except why had she looked at him like that on the beach, if she was determined to hate him forever, if she was so certain that he wasn't him? Why had she leaned in close when he whispered in her ear-why had she kissed him?)

Something twisted uncomfortably in his stomach, and for all that it suddenly felt hollow, the Doctor couldn't bring himself to eat another bite. Instead, discomfort gnawed at his insides as he remembered the months that passed after he lost Rose. Even if the initial pain had died down somewhat, faded to a dull background ache instead of a constant splitting wound, he had missed her terribly. He still did.

"Rubbish," the Doctor scoffed. "How can you miss someone when they're right there?"

And just like that, his desire to eat had fled once again. The Doctor stood in the corridor, picking at the banana peel, wondering if all humans experienced these wild swings in appetite, or if this body in particular was flawed, or if the food in this universe didn't offer sufficient nutrition, somehow.

"Just not my world," he murmured. "Not my world at all."

He glanced up to find a caretaker, pausing in the middle of his paint-job to watch the Doctor talk to himself, and looking on with no small amount of bemusement.

"I'm rehearsing a play," said the Doctor drily. "It opens Friday in the West End. Wanna come?"

With a disgruntled cough and a shake of the head, the caretaker resumed painting, and the Doctor continued ambling down the corridor, tossing the last bite of his banana into a nearby bin. In fishing around his pockets for a handkerchief, his fingers brushed against a small lump of coral hiding amongst the other trinkets and bobs and bits and everything else; with a jolt, the Doctor remembered the wink Donna shot him when she wordlessly pressed it into his palm. That wink told him everything would be all right. That, and if he so much as breathed a word about this to the other Doctor, she'd bludgeon him about the head.

His fingers closed around the coral and he breathed a little easier. He said a silent, belated thanks to Donna for her help, and more importantly, for her trust. Goodness, but he already missed her horribly.

She was right, though. He was certain of that. Even if things looked dire at the moment, they'd turn out all right in the end. Things had a funny habit of working out that way. Soon enough, everything would be just-

A scream tore through the air and ripped through his thoughts.

The Doctor whirled round, placing the source of the scream. It sounded like it had come from the cafeteria-

It sounded like Miranda.

A split-second later the Doctor was sprinting back down the hallway, pushing past the caretaker and knocking over a potted plant as he reached the cafeteria entrance. Chest heaving with exertion (really? already? rubbish human respiratory system), the Doctor scanned the room all over for the nice dinner lady, looking over the rows of tables and benches, the rubbish-bins, the counter-

Miranda wasn't standing back there anymore.

The Doctor ran through the cafeteria, jumping over the counter and pushing open the kitchen doors. Between a pair of industrial shelves, sprawled facedown on the rubber mats, there she was. Fingernails dark, as if bruised, her hand clutched a company radio, its speaker shrieking out a shrill static tone in the silence. Something wet coated the mat beneath Miranda, shining dully in the flickering fluorescent lights.

Even from here, it was apparent that she was dead.

"Miranda, can you hear me?" the Doctor asked anyway, kneeling next to her on the mat. "I'm going to administer CPR, all right?" he said as he slid a large bag of rice from its place on a shelf. "Just give me one second, I've got to slip this beneath your chest to provide a counter-force for the…"

He trailed off, frowning. He'd assumed it was a trick of the light, before, but now that he knelt closer, he could see that the fluid coating the mat beneath Miranda's face wasn't the telltale crimson of blood; it was black, thick, something sticky and ichorous like molasses or oil. Agonizingly aware of every precious second that ticked by, the Doctor leaned forward and pulled Miranda's hair away from her neck and face. His mouth fell open in shock.

Whatever had happened to her...Miranda didn't look like Miranda anymore.

No longer pink-cheeked and bright, her skin was pale, almost white, utterly drained of color and life. Dark fluid seeped from her mouth, coating her teeth and staining her lips black. The capillaries in her face and neck had gone dark, an inky spiderweb standing stark beneath translucent skin. Dark grey tears streamed down her cheek in a slimy-shiny snail's trail. Her eyes, open and unseeing, were black as pitch. All of that told the Doctor three things: one, Miranda's blood oxygen levels were so low, no amount of cardiopulmonary resuscitation would help her. Two, he had no earthly clue what killed her-or unearthly clue, for that matter. And three, whatever had killed her, it worked _quickly._ Shockingly quickly.

"Oh, Miranda," the Doctor murmured, aghast. "What happened to you?"

On impulse, he pressed two fingers against the carotid artery in her neck, only to snap back the instant he made contact; her skin was hot to the touch, impossibly so. It was far beyond _feverish_-if the Doctor had to label it, the word would be _boiling_.

The Doctor cursed himself. Whatever this was-this chemical reaction, or bacteria, or virus, he couldn't be sure just yet-it hadn't arisen out of nowhere. Miranda was surely suffering when they spoke just moments before, and he simply hadn't noticed. Hadn't noticed, because he was human, now, and prone to a human's distractions and stupidity and carelessness and assorted other flaws. If he'd been his old self, surely he would have noticed any telltale signs straightaway, maybe would have spotted them in time to save her.

If he'd been his old self…

"I'm sorry," he sighed heavily amidst the sounds of UNIT employees gathering behind him, murmuring and gasping at the scene, urging each other to call 999. "I'm so, so sorry."

It looked like this was his world, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

The card-reader denied her ID. Typical; leave it to Oliver to update that sort of thing as soon as humanly possible. It was every bit as impressive as it was infuriating.

Swearing under her breath, Rose shoved the card back in her jacket-pocket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver instead. It felt more than a little wrong, using one of the Doctor's most trusted implements to take care of this—especially given that it was a dead Doctor's instrument, even if he technically had never really died, since that universe had technically never existed, or however that worked—but hopefully the Doctor would understand.

(The real Doctor, that was; she didn't want to think about how the new Doctor would feel.)

A whir of the sonic and the door slid open, revealing a darkened lab filled with dozens upon dozens of projects in various states of assemblage, deconstruction, and dissection; Rose strode past all of them straight to the back room, where the Dimension Cannon sat, exactly as she'd left it days ago. With one last glance around to make absolutely certain no one was watching (no matter how much it felt like it), Rose flipped a few switches and the Cannon powered on, whining to life in the cold, dark room.

Rose entered the initialization sequence with trembling fingers. This would work. It would. _It had to_.

The Cannon's whine gave way to a dull groan, flooding the room with sound until the walls and the floors and the soles of Rose's boots buzzed and hummed with it. If she'd turned on the overhead lights, Rose knew they would be flickering right about now, drained by the massive amount of power required to operate the Cannon. She flipped on the sonic again, this time to bypass Oliver and Christa's authorization codes and bring the Cannon to full power. The Cannon's pilot lights glowed an eerie yellow-green in the semi-darkness, blinking here, flashing there. Rose waited and watched it all with breathless anticipation.

Blinking in greeting, the display invited Rose to step into the transportation chamber and enter coordinates. She complied, clambering into the chamber and typing in coordinates, her jaw set and her gaze grim. But she hesitated, after, her fingers hovering over the return key. The moment suspended in time, growing sluggish with each passing tick of the clock.

He would only be upset for a little bit, the nearly-Doctor. Maybe he wouldn't even have time to notice she was gone—it wasn't like Rose would leave him waiting for years on end. Rose would hop back as soon as she could—it would be easy enough, with the TARDIS—and she would give him the chance to come with her and the Doctor, if he wanted. Because as angry as she was, at the Doctor, at _him_, he still deserved a choice. The same choice she had deserved.

She bit her lip. Maybe she should wait, grab him first. Just in case.

(Maybe she shouldn't do this at all.)

Deep breaths. Rose steadied herself. Reminded herself of the years of work and research, the months of construction, the weeks full of jumps, the hours of post-jumping sickness early in the trials, the late nights and early mornings and lost weekends that followed after. She remembered all of the terrible things she had seen, the things she had done, the people she couldn't help, the worlds she couldn't save—

All that time, she could have slid back into a normal life—could have, maybe even _should have_—and she chose this instead.

Or tried to choose, she thought with a grimace.

Certainty resurged through her veins and she smacked the return key with a vengeance.

* * *

(The Cannon didn't work. Because of course it didn't.)

* * *

At least the meltdown was polite enough to wait until she was far away from the expensive lab equipment.

(_Why don't you try counting, Rose?_ she remembered her first UNIT counselor advising her, along with a host of other exercises designed to dispel negative emotions. _Try thinking of your happy place._ _Try punching a pillow or a punching-bag, and imagine your enemy's face is there. Try finding your inner peace_, he'd say, accompanied by a condescending paternal gaze thrown warmly over his oversized, outdated glasses that looked like something a 70's serial killer might have worn. Needless to say, it didn't take Rose long to switch counselors; her current therapist, a brisk and no-nonsense former military surgeon, urged her to find ways to investigate and resolve those negative emotions instead. _Cognitive restructuring_, she would say sharply, in her thick New Zealand accent. _Deep relaxation. Support-network engagement. Open communication. Mindfulness_, the counselor would urge, and much to Rose's surprise, when she tried these techniques, they often helped.)

Approximately .002 seconds into her meditative cooldown, Rose punched through the washroom mirror.

(Why had she expected the Cannon to work? He'd told her he was closing up the last gaps between universes. He'd _told_ her. And that was the one sort of thing he wouldn't lie about.)

Probably she should stop while she was ahead, or at least not as far behind as she could have been, but instead, Rose drew back her fist and punched again. And again. And again. Tears gummed up her eyelashes and pain screamed at her from far away, punctuated by the sharp screech of shattering glass and cracking tile, but she forced her stiffening fingers to hold their shape and punched her fist into the mirror over and over and over, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, _smash_, until Rose drew her hand back to find a ragged-edged hole in the glass and her hand glistening with blood.

Rose bit back on a strangled cry, breath escaping her lungs in bursts. Pain blossomed through her hand, bleeding to the forefront of her consciousness, and she doubled over with the intensity of it, gasping as her hand swelled and throbbed with hurt. _Idiot, idiot, idiot_ her pulse shrieked, in time with the lights flickering overhead.

Shaking, Rose flipped on the faucet and forced her hand beneath the cold water. Fresh hurt seared through her hand and she shouted in pain, cursing as she gingerly removed debris from her torn knuckles. Two of her fingers were turning purple already, stiff and swollen and tender to move. _Sprained_, Rose thought, and cursed herself for her stupidity.

Mouth tensing in pain as she gently dabbed her hand dry, Rose took a few extra moments to calm herself, allowing the pain to wash over her, breathing in and out through quivering lungs. _In, out. In, out._ Her uninjured hand flew up to her chest, pressing against the key that hung from a chain round her neck; hidden beneath her shirts, it laid heavy and solid and cool against her overheated skin, and she traced her thumb along its jagged-toothed edge, willing herself to calm, to let this moment pass.

_In, out. In, and out._

She would get through this. She would.

Glancing up at the mirror, at the disjointed fractures of her reflection spiraling downward into the hollow left by her fist, she thought grimly about how she finally looked every bit as horrible as she felt. Great. Just _great_.

What the hell was she supposed to do now?

"Probably fix your damn fingers," Rose muttered to her reflection, which didn't disagree. All right. So that was step one. She could worry about steps two through forever later.

After a brief detour to the lab's emergency first-aid cabinet, where she gulped down some paracetamol and grabbed a few key supplies, Rose made her way over to her office, a tiny room tucked away in an unobtrusive corner of the laboratory. Plonking down on her desk amidst a scuffle of loose files and stacks of neglected paperwork, she got to work splinting her fingers, wincing as she wound medical tape over gauze and bruises and blood, forcing herself to remember to breathe.

_In, out._

One last circuit of the medical tape and Rose tore the stuff free from the roll with her teeth, tucking it securely in place. She closed her eyes, just breathing.

_In, out._

Footsteps sounded gently in the near distance—quiet, but not quiet enough to ping the sense that someone was sneaking up on her, probably some labbie come to chase her off, what with her shiny new _persona non grata_ status and all—but Rose paid the noise little mind.

_In, out._

_(Idiot.)_

"Thought I mind find you in here," said a familiar voice, slicing through her thoughts, and Rose opened her eyes to find Jackie standing in front of her, hands planted on hips, brow wrinkled in worry. "Or I was afraid of it, more like."

Jackie flipped the lightswitch behind her and Rose blinked sterile white light out of her eyes. "Shouldn't you be tucking Tony in bed right about now?" Rose asked tiredly, shifting her injured hand out of sight.

"Pete's got it sorted. Not that it matters, the nursery let him have soda, so he'll be up all hours of the night anyway," Jackie sighed, shaking her head. "But I had a funny little feeling I should turn back round and take care of my other child right about now. Call it a mum's intuition."

"You don't need to worry about me, Mum. I'm fine. Everything's fine."

"Right, so that's why you're hiding in your office in the dark?"

"Yep," said Rose flatly.

Jacked tutted under her breath. "It's not gonna do you any good, you know. You can't avoid things forever."

"I just needed a moment to myself, that's all."

"But you will give him a chance, though? The new Doctor."

"Yeah," replied Rose, her voice clipped. "Sure."

"Don't suppose it means anything that he gave up so much to be with you."

Rose chuckled halfheartedly. "You're taking his side, now? Maybe things have changed after all."

"Listen, I may not know what a crisis-thing is, but I do know I'm glad he came here and brought you with him," Jackie told her. "Cos he could've stayed over in the other universe, easy as pie, and you'd've stayed, too. But he didn't. You've always been so willing to give up everything for him—your family, your friends, your home, your life—"

"That was my choice, Mum—"

"—so really, it's only fair he'd do the same, ain't it? High time he gave up everything for you, for a change."

"It's not like that."

Jackie huffed. "Looks an awful lot like that to me. This Doctor, he said goodbye to that magic ship of his and everything, just for you, to stay here with you. Didn't he?"

"He didn't, though. He would never."

"How do you know? Maybe this new one would."

Rose grunted noncommittally, scrubbing her noninjured hand over her face. Jackie cocked her head, mouth pursed thin as she took a moment to gauge Rose properly. "What's wrong, love?" she asked, her tone suddenly shrewd. "I mean, what's _really _wrong?"

Rose shrugged. _It doesn't matter. _Maybe if she thought it hard enough, it would become true. How was that for cognitive restructuring?

"You're acting all angry at that new Doctor, but it's not him at all, is it?"

Rose did not reply.

With a sigh, Jackie shucked her jacket, setting it aside. "It's the other him, yeah?" she asked gently. "The one that sent you away."

Pressure burned in Rose's sinuses and she twisted her mouth, willing the tears back.

"Oh, sweetheart," Jackie sighed, drawing Rose into a hug. Her embrace was warm, imbued with that special brand of soft maternal warmth, and Rose had to fight harder not to cry because of it. She hugged her mother limply, and Jackie squeezed tighter in response, like she could smoosh all the bad feelings away.

"It's his loss," said Jackie, gently. "You know that, right?"

"Yeah." Rose didn't have the energy to argue.

"I'm so sorry, Rose," Jackie said, squeezing again for good measure. The hug was almost unbearably hot, but Rose couldn't bring herself to pull away. "I really am. I know how hard you worked to get back. And it weren't right, the way the other Doctor sent you away like that, without even hardly a word from you. I know it hurts. Believe me—I know. But in a way—well, in a way, wasn't it sort of a good thing?"

"Downright charitable," Rose muttered.

"This way, you get the best of both worlds. Him, and everything else. Or a version of him, anyway. And isn't it nice, that you get to keep your family, now? Isn't it nice that you'll get to spend more time with your dad, see your brother grow up, keep all your friends, all that?"

Rose couldn't muster a reply; hot guilt and cold anger and tired resignation all roiled restlessly in her mind and none of them offered anything useful to say.

"I would have missed you horribly," said Jackie, her voice unusually small. "Wouldn't you have missed me at all?"

"Of course I would've, Mum."

"Yeah. So why don't you talk to me about it all, then? Tell Mum what's eating you, love."

With a deep breath, Rose stepped back and opened her mouth to reply—she didn't really feel like talking about it, didn't really feel like talking at all, but her therapist's words echoed in her ears (_Support-network engagement, Rose. _Open communication_, Rose)_ and she knew, however grudgingly, that she should at least try; she owed her mum that much—but her words were cut off by the sudden shrill squeal of an alarm blaring overhead.

"Warning: Code Blue," a pleasant female voice announced through the intercom as emergency lights flashed from the ceiling. "Code Blue. Status level Four. Please implement standard quarantine protocol. All personnel must proceed in a swift, calm, and orderly manner to their nearest quarantine station. Warning: Code Blue…"

"What's that?" asked Jackie.

"Code Blue," Rose echoed. "Something to do with Medical, I think."

"Oh! Must be the thing upstairs, then."

"What thing?"

"When I was on my way in, there were all these people crowded round the cafeteria," Jackie explained. "I just thought it was alcohol poisoning—dunno if you've seen the news at all, but the emergency lines are absolutely swamped with reports of it, absolutely everyone's pissed, s'like the stars came back and no one can hold their liquor anymore..."

She kept talking, but Rose hadn't registered any of the words that left her mouth after _cafeteria_. Fog filled her head, obscuring any thoughts of anything that wasn't her conversation with the Doctor outside the lift, trying to rid herself of him, telling him to do whatever he liked, with the unspoken addendum that as long as it was nowhere near her, he could go wherever he wanted.

Including the cafeteria—

Rose pushed past Jackie, ignoring how her mum shouted after her in confusion. A low whine droned in her ears as she stalked her way to the lab door, growing louder and louder and louder until it drowned out all other sound.

_What if_—?

Panic seized her and the lab door was sliding open and god, had it always been so interminably slow? Rose slid through the gap and made her way to the lift, striding, jogging, then sprinting as her heart pounded painfully in her throat. She slammed the lift button several times before remembering that, of course, emergency protocol meant lifts were down. She bolted over to the stairwell instead, throwing open the doors and darting up the stairs two and three at a time, shoving past the few personnel she encountered along the way.

"They said to go calmly," one agent irritably called after her and on any other day she might agree, maybe stop to apologize or at least throw a _Sorry! _over her shoulder, but her throat was too thick and her chest was too tight and what had happened upstairs, what had happened in the cafeteria, what if he'd been there when it happened, what if it had happened to him, what if his new human body couldn't handle whatever it was and now he was—what if—what if what if what if _what if_—

"Rose!" shouted Jackie, chasing after her. "What's wrong?"

_Do what you like, it's no difference to me._

Rose barreled straight into an abandoned caretaker's trolley, knocking supplies to the floor in a flurry of mops and spray-bottles. She left them rolling across the floor and kept running. Seconds later, she'd arrived at the lunchroom, and what she saw stole the last of her breath away. A bunch of hastily-installed plastic quarantine sheeting obscured much of the view inside the cafeteria's glass doors, but the blobs of telltale bright yellow moving slowly round inside told her enough.

Oh, god. _Oh god_.

Rose flipped out the sonic and unlocked the doors without a second thought, pulling aside the plastic sheeting to see HAZMAT-suited agents covering every inch of the place. Agents with plastic-bagged oversized cameras photographed the scene while others scraped samples off tables and walls and counters and chairs, entering data into their tablets and laptops. Several operatives trawled the area with black light instruments, meticulously searching for any sign of biological fluids; others stood in groups of two and three, talking in low tones, their voices quiet in that special sort of too-casual way that suggests a conversation one doesn't want attention drawn toward.

But then Rose's gaze found the far corner of the room, and her stomach lurched awfully at the sight of it. There, nearly hidden by HAZMAT-suited medical officers in a disjointed row of highlighter-neon-yellow, sat a stretcher, a covered body lying still and unmoving atop it. And a memory swam up in Rose's mind, of another stretcher and another body, in a cold dark room, with the TARDIS dying nearby…

Her blood turned to ice in her veins. All sound filtered from the room, leaving behind a strange buzzing in her ears instead. Rose's feet carried her forward on impulse, leading her to the body. It wasn't until one of the HAZMAT suits stepped in her path, blocking her view, that she realized how far she'd made it into the room, how everyone had stopped to stare at her.

"Excuse me," Rose said in something of a daze, fishing out her now-defunct UNIT ID. "Agent Tyler, Special Sciences Division. I just have to check…"

"Sorry, Agent Tyler," said the officer, stepping in her path once again as she tried to duck around him. "It's essential personnel only. I can't let you through."

"It's all right!" Jackie piped up, following after Rose with a hand pressed to her chest, wheezing as if she were winded from the run. "Jackie Tyler here, Director Tyler's wife. She's with me—"

"Just tell me if you've got an ID on the body," Rose pleaded.

"That information is classified."

"Please," she choked out.

"Agent Tyler—"

"Look, I know you've got your protocols, but I've got to make sure, I've just got to know if it's—please, I have to know, it'll only take me a second—_please_—"

"For Christ's sake, what are you doing, just letting them stand there?" barked out another HAZMAT suit, gesturing impatiently. "This is an _active hazard area. _Get them to decontamination! And would someone please lock the bloody lunchroom doors?" he snapped as the officer grabbed Rose and Jackie each by the arm to haul them away.

"No, wait!" cried Rose as the officer dragged them back amidst Jackie's indignant shouts of "Well_, that's_ nice!" But the officer only pulled them further and further away from the stretcher and the body atop it. "You don't understand," Rose pleaded, "I've got to check, I have to make sure it isn't him, I've got to—"

But the agent had already managed to tow them to the storage room at the back of the cafeteria, tossing Rose and hauling Jackie inside. Normally stocked to the brim with canned and packaged foodstuffs and paper goods, the storage room was now empty, save the decontamination station rigged up inside; the portable shower stood dark and ominous next to large dispensers of suspiciously unlabeled chemicals that Rose knew would not be intended to touch human skin under absolutely any other circumstances. Rose briefly wondered what on earth they could be dealing with here, just how terribly bad it must be, but shook her head; she didn't have time to care about that right now. Right now, she had to make sure that corpse wasn't the Doctor. Nothing else mattered.

"All right," the HAZMAT-suited officer huffed, turning round to close the doors. "Now that that's all out of the way—"

"_Out of the way_ my arse," shouted Jackie. "We've got rights, you know!"

"Oh, believe me, Jackie, I know—"

Rose lunged forward, slamming the agent bodily against the doors as she wrenched his arm up his back. "I need to know if that's my friend lying dead out there," she spat out over the sound of the agent hissing in pain. "So you can let me check, or I can break your arm. Which'll it be?"

"Listen, you've got it all wrong—"

"Not what I want to hear," said Rose, twisting the agent's arm higher still.

"Doesn't matter if you want to hear it or not, it's still—_blimey_, Rose! Go easy, would you? It's a brand new arm and I'd like to go more than a day without breaking it!"

It took a few seconds for the words to sink in, but once they did, Rose dropped the officer's arm, her pulse thundering in her ears. She tore off the HAZMAT helmet and threw it to the floor, grabbing the agent by the shoulder so she could whip him round.

Sure enough, it was the new Doctor staring down at her, his eyes wide in bewilderment and his hair absolutely mussed.

Relief surged through her. He was all right. The Doctor was all right. (_Only sort-of the Doctor_ bubbled up faintly in the back of her head, but she ignored it in favor of springing forward to envelope the Doctor in a bone-squeezing hug.)

"Stupid git," she said breathlessly.

With a pleased little hum, the Doctor hugged her back. "Nice to see you, too. Well-worth the insults and the dislocated shoulder."

"Shut up," said Rose, but she didn't let go, couldn't do it quite yet, not until she was absolutely certain this was really him and her stupid imagination wasn't playing tricks on her again. She resisted the urge to bury her face against his chest while her breathing calmed down, but only just. She settled for hugging him harder, instead.

"So why're you in a suit?" Jackie demanded.

Rose shook herself, willing herself to calm down. Her mother's presence and the plastic suit digging uncomfortably into her cheek was a timely reminder that no matter how glad she was that the almost-Doctor was alive and well, ultimately, that's all he was—the _almost_-Doctor. Not a Time Lord in a brown suit in the TARDIS, but a human bloke, in a blue suit and yellow HAZMAT gear, squeezing her in a hug that was just a little too tight and a lot too full of stiff pointy plastic. He wasn't the Doctor, no matter how relieved she was to see him, no matter how much her body wanted to believe it, clinging to him like one magnet drawn to another. This wasn't exactly right. He wasn't exactly _him_.

Rose pried herself away so she could swat him on the arm. "Why'd you scare me like that?" she demanded. "And yeah, why are you wearing a suit? Where'd you even get a suit? What's going on out there?"

"Well," said the Doctor, frowning and rubbing his arm where Rose struck it, "In order—it wasn't intentional, it was the only way to get in, I stole it, and you've got a mystery medical hazard on your hands resulting in three dead bodies and no clue on what got them. That answer your questions, or are you going to opt for more surprise violence?"

Jackie's eyes widened. "Three bodies? We only saw one."

"She was just the first. There are two other scenes just like this elsewhere in the building."

Rose swore under her breath. Four years of intensive training, teaching her to spot anything that looked out of the ordinary, even in the most innocuous of ways, yet here she'd been, so wrapped up in her own stupid self-pitying thoughts that she hadn't even noticed anything was amiss, much less that three people were on the brink of death. And now they were gone, nothing she or anyone else could do about it. Gone, just like that. Forever.

(Was it anyone she knew, she wondered? If she hadn't allowed herself to drown so completely in her own petty nonsense, would she have spotted the problems in time? Was there a chance she could have done something, anything, to help them…?)

Drinking in deep lungfuls of air, Rose centered herself. This wasn't about her. It was about the three lives lost, the possibility of losing more. Besides, the Doctor was here, or someone enough like him, anyway. That meant the situation, as horrible as it was, was manageable.

Right?

"What happened?" she asked, her voice hard.

"Near as anyone can tell, we're dealing with some sort of contagion."

"Any idea what it is?"

The Doctor shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. "Could be naturally-occurring, could be a manufactured bioweapon. All I know is that it's bad. Really, really bad. Fast-acting, fast-spreading, alters the bodily fluids on a molecular level, resulting in suffocation due to fluid-filled lungs and a fever hot enough to cook the victim from the inside out."

"Oh Jesus," Jackie breathed, wincing. She fanned herself with her hand, as if the idea was enough to make her faint. "That's awful."

"It certainly is. I've never seen anything quite like it. And from what I've overheard, no one else here has seen anything like it, either—"

"It's probably got something to do with those labs downstairs," Jackie sniffed. "Lord knows what you lot get up to in there, making viruses into weapons and things."

"It doesn't sound like any UNIT projects I know of," Rose replied, frowning. "And Pete and I keep a pretty close eye on that sort of thing."

The Doctor nodded. "We should really look into UNIT's secure servers just to be certain, in the event that any less-scrupulous employees might be hiding something we should know about. Right now, the prevailing theory amongst the medical team is that we're dealing with a mutation of the Black Plague, but—"

"Do you think that could be it?" asked Rose.

"No."

"Why not?"

"It just isn't."

"Okay, but…" Rose started to say, and stopped.

The Doctor watched her expectantly.

Rose hesitated. She didn't want to hurt this new Doctor's feelings just for the hell of it, she really didn't. But if there was any chance that the UNIT medical team could be right...well, what was more important right now, sparing the sort-of Doctor's ego, or finding an immediate solution?

(Besides—wouldn't the real Doctor have figured something out, by now?)

"Is there any chance it could be the Plague, and you're just overlooking something, or, I don't know, maybe forgetting?" Rose asked, and the Doctor's expression cooled. "Maybe all the memories didn't transfer properly, or—"

"Nope," the Doctor said cheerfully, his words only a little strained. "Doesn't work like that. I know everything I knew before and I remember everything I remembered before. Same memories, same knowledge, same reasoning, same feelings, same everything up in the ol' noodle."

"Okay, sure, but just—"

"It was me then, and it's me now," the Doctor interrupted just a little too brightly, and good grief, even the way his dimple twinged in his cheek was exactly the same as before. "Not a Xerox machine; isn't as if information was lost in the transfer. I'm not a clone, not a duplicate, not a copy, just me. The only thing that's changed is the packaging. All right? Does that make sense? Do you understand that?"

Rose laughed nastily. "Well it must be you after all, seeing as you're still talking to me like I'm some stupid ape too thick to understand anything. At least some things never change, right?"

The Doctor glared at her. Rose glared back. Jackie fanned herself as she watched them both, unimpressed.

He huffed in impatience. "The Black Plague, or Bubonic plague, is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium _Yersinia pestis_, commonly present in fleas that prey on ground rodents," he began, his gaze locked on hers. "The most well-known symptom is a series of fluid filled 'buboes' located in the neck, the underarms, and the groin, in addition to acute fever, vomiting of blood, and sometimes acral gangrene in the extremities. One can also expect the sudden appearance of a rash, likely caused by the bite of the flea or fleas carrying the _Yersinia pestis_ bacterium. Symptoms typically develop within two to seven days of exposure to the infected rodents, and, if untreated, worsen over time.

"Now," the Doctor continued, speaking more rapidly the longer he went on despite his chipper tone, "the lack of buboes or rashes present on the victims, in addition to the absence of rodents in the immediately surrounding area, and no reports of rodent outbreaks in the general area, as well as the fact that none of the victims appeared to be presenting symptoms in the two to seven days leading up to their deaths, all suggest that no, this is not, in fact, the Plague, or any permutation thereof. The only symptoms that match are the presence of fever, the vomiting of blood—though it's worth noting that it appears to be less of a vomiting action, more of an involuntary expulsion post-mortem—and the appearance of black cutaneous and subcutaneous tissues, but anyone with a working set of eyes and nostrils can tell you that the black tissues and disgorged blood are not discolored from the Plague's trademark necrosis or septicemia, but rather something else altogether. Furthermore, while the Plague has managed to survive in some regions worldwide, its occurrence in this era is quite rare, and its symptoms have barely evolved over time, so unless this universe's version of the Plague has inexplicably jumped forward a few dozen millennia in its evolutionary timeline apropos of no discernable evolutionary trigger whatsoever, the Plague does not explain the immediate onset of symptoms, nor the total discoloration of the eyes, a symptom present in each victim thus far. Ergo, no, we're not dealing with the Plague, and just because it's the most popular theory doesn't mean it's correct, and while it's understandable that your panicking medical team is grasping for a familiar explanation, it's becoming rapidly apparent that there isn't one, and just because I don't know what our mystery contagion is _yet_, that doesn't mean I won't figure it out very shortly. All of which I managed to calculate within precisely 5.26 seconds of hearing the posited diagnosis, precisely the same as I would have done before, in my other body, in the other universe."

The Doctor drew a deep breath. "Now, does that satisfy your explanatory criteria, or shall I continue wasting time?"

"No, we're good," Rose replied. "I appreciate the explanation, though. It's much better than simply being told to play along, no questions asked."

"So if it's not the Plague, then what is it?" asked Jackie before the Doctor had a chance to retort.

He frowned. "I don't know yet," he admitted. "Truthfully, I don't know much about what our killer is, only what it isn't. I'd really need the sonic to get a good reading on things—oh, I hadn't even thought of that yet, the sonic," the Doctor sighed morosely, scratching the back of his neck. "Suppose I'll have to build myself a new one. I wonder where a fellow can find a half-decent subminiature electroacoustic transducer in this universe—"

Rose fished the sonic screwdriver out of her jacket and presented it to him.

Eyes landing on the sonic, the Doctor fell silent. His gaze flickered from the screwdriver to Rose's face, back to the screwdriver and up to her face again. Rose forced herself not to flinch beneath his scrutiny.

"How did you get ahold of that?" the Doctor asked slowly. "And why, for that matter?"

"It's not what you think it is. Or at least, it's not _whose_ you think it is."

The Doctor arched an eyebrow in a way that clearly suggested her remark raised more questions than answers.

"Look, do you want it or not?" Rose asked impatiently.

Still eyeing Rose with a healthy dose of wariness, the Doctor took the sonic from her. "Just how many questions have you dodged today, hm?" he asked. "Have you given a straight answer to anyone, about anything?"

Rose didn't blink. "That's sort of rich, coming from you."

The Doctor looked like he wanted to argue, but if so, he must have thought better of it, because the next thing Rose knew, he was scanning himself with the sonic, guiding it over the lines and planes of his suit and helmet. "Nothing to report here, not yet anyway," he said, glancing at the readings on the screwdriver. "But even without the sonic, it's obvious that the contagion is fast-acting. None of the victims reported to sickbay with any symptoms, according to the reports, and Miranda certainly wasn't presenting any symptoms when I spoke to her, except perhaps a mild fever, maybe a little cough."

"Miranda?" gasped Jackie. "Oh no, not the nice dinner lady?"

The Doctor nodded.

"Oh, what a shame. She didn't deserve all that."

"No, she didn't."

Rose watched him curiously. "You knew her?"

"Only barely," the Doctor murmured, his eyes narrowed in focus. Rose glanced down to see what he was looking at, and—ah. So he'd noticed her hand, then, taking in the splint, the swelling, the bandage-job only just hiding a whole host of bruises and tiny cuts. Leaning forward, the Doctor took her hand in his, inspecting it.

"Oh my god, Rose!" snapped Jackie, aghast, jerking Rose's hand away from the Doctor (and ignoring Rose's wince of pain). "When did that happen? What did you _do_?"

Rose cleared her throat and avoided anyone's gaze, fidgeting uncomfortably. "So you were saying, erm. Miranda and the others were totally fine, right up until they suddenly died."

"It would seem that way," replied the Doctor. He was still looking at her hand, as if maybe he was trying to ascertain, without asking, how her fingers came to be in such a state. He gently eased her hand out of Jackie's grasp and now her fingers were the subject of the sonic screwdriver's glare, its light bathing her in a ghostly blue glow. "So we're either dealing with a totally invisible incubation period, or something that can infect and kill you within moments. Still can't determine how it's spreading, though; if it were transmittable via air or food or touch, you'd think we'd have a lot more victims by now, considering how quickly the symptoms seemed to manifest, and how many people our dinner lady would have come into contact with today."

He gently turned Rose's hand over, running the sonic over it one last time. "Three small tears in the ligaments of the intermediate phalanges," he announced. "And for some reason, traces of…"

The Doctor trailed off thoughtfully, glancing up at her. "If I asked you what happened here," he said, his voice light, "would you tell me?"

Rose thought of the Cannon and swallowed against the lump that had sprung up in her throat. "No."

Jackie tutted impatiently. "Thought as much," said the Doctor with a nod, and if Rose didn't know any better, she'd think his shoulders were slumping a little, as if in resignation. As if that was precisely the answer he'd anticipated.

"So, erm. What else do you know about Miranda, then? Anything relevant?" Rose asked, more to fill the silence than anything.

"Not really. She was nice, though. Gave me some free food. And she's got a boatload of kids at home, sounded like she was taking care of them all on her own. Does UNIT have anything in place, for stuff like that?"

"Yeah."

"They'll be well taken-care-of," Jackie piped up, coughing into her elbow. "We made sure of it, Rose and me."

"Sort of feels like the least we can do, considering," Rose muttered.

"Considering?"

Rose worried the inside of her cheek. "I should've known something was off. Should've noticed straightaway. But I didn't."

"Rose Tyler," said the Doctor, with a sad but knowing smile, "this is not your fault, in any way, shape, or form. You know that, right?"

Rose shrugged. "I know, but—"

"Nope! No _buts_," the Doctor said, cheerful once again as Jackie looped one arm round Rose, rubbing her shoulder supportively. "Even I didn't pick up on anything, and my senses are considerably more attuned than yours—no offense, that's just how it is, human body or no—so no one could reasonably expect you to anticipate such an occurrence, much less react in time to prevent it. The whole abysmal business is unfortunate, of course. Horrible, even. But as difficult as it can be to admit it, sometimes bad things just…"

Something to the right of Rose caught his attention and the Doctor trailed off, his brow furrowing in worry. "...happen," he finished a moment later, the word gone faint at the end.

He cleared his throat. "Jackie," he said, in a tone that very much suggested he was fighting to stay calm, "I don't suppose you happened to develop a penchant for black nail polish within the last hour or so, did you?"

"God, no. Why?"

The Doctor gestured to the hand resting on Rose's shoulder; Rose glanced down at it and frowned. Strange, she didn't remember her mum complaining of any bruises beneath her fingernails, yet here they were, all of them darkening near the nailbed, almost as if she'd got lazy while painting her nails and abandoned the task halfway through, or a series of blood blisters had erupted beneath the skin and she just hadn't noticed or said anything. But it must not have hurt, or else Jackie surely would have mentioned it by now. In fact, the only thing Rose really noticed was how warm her mum's hand felt…

Almost feverish.

"What is that?" Rose asked with a composure she did not feel. "On Mum's hand, that black stuff—what is it?"

In response, the Doctor nudged Rose aside so he could scan Jackie's face with the sonic, ignoring her indignant little _"Oi!"_ as he blasted blue-white light directly into her eyes; whatever he read on the sonic caused him to pull back with a look of alarm.

"What's wrong?" Jackie asked, panicking, glancing over her fingernails. "Have I got the thing? Am I sick?"

"We've got to get her to an infirmary," the Doctor told Rose, and she wondered if she'd ever seen him so pale before. Rose's blood pressure plummeted like a stone. "_Now_."

A knock at the door, loud and violent like a battering-ram, made them all jump. "Stay back!" the Doctor shouted through the door, unzipping his HAZMAT gear to reveal that strange new blue suit of his underneath. Fishing around in his suit-pockets, he pulled out a medical mask, slipping it on over Jackie's head. "We've got infected in here!"

_Infected_. Rose's head swam at the word.

No voices replied but a knock sounded again, louder this time, heavier. "Move away from the door!" the Doctor called out, but the knocking only got louder and more insistent. "Not a very good batch of listeners, are they?" the Doctor muttered irritably, securing the medical mask in place; Rose tried to move to help but her earlier panic had returned with a vengeance and her arms were trembly and her legs frozen solid.

Her mother was sick just like the others and _the others were dead within moments_—

"What about you two, though?" Jackie asked the Doctor. Her voice sounded leathery and strange through the mask. "Are you gonna get sick too?"

"Don't worry about me—I'm still in the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle, bursting with all that residual cellular energy. Remember?" he said, and he flashed his right hand at Rose—his fightin' hand, Rose recalled. "I only stole the suit in the first place so I could sneak in undetected. Rose, on the other hand..."

He froze, glancing up at her, and swallowed. "I'm sure you'll be fine."

Rose nodded dumbly, unable to respond over the rushing in her ears, fear threatening to strangle her. She wasn't too worried about herself. But her mother...

"All right!" the Doctor shouted over the _pound-pound-pounding_ at the door. "We're coming out now, give us a moment to collect ourselves, won't you—?"

He threw open the door to reveal a whole host of HAZMAT-clad operatives waiting outside in the cafeteria. The operatives stared, no longer beating at the doors, but now silent and unmoving, watching Rose and Jackie and the Doctor through dark-fogged visors.

Rose gulped. Maybe it was just the lightheadedness swarming up in her skull, but something about all of this felt very, very strange.

(She couldn't help but notice the blackish-grey stuff dotting the suits here and there, where she could have sworn it hadn't, before; she couldn't stop wondering why they were all so quiet, now, couldn't stop thinking how much the dark impressions behind each visor loomed like shadowy skulls.)

"Can we help you?" asked the Doctor, nonplussed. "Only we're in a bit of a hurry."

"Give it to us," rasped one of the operatives.

"Right, right, of course," said the Doctor, glancing from one agent to another to another. "But, erm. Just to make sure we're on the same page—we're giving you what, now?"

Wordlessly, one of the agents raised its arm in agonizing slow-motion, pointing inexorably toward Jackie. She shrank back in fear and, unthinking, Rose stepped in front of her.

(But what was wrong with the medical officers? What had happened to them?

They were infected too, weren't they?

How long did Jackie have, before she became just like them?)

"Interesting," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "Also, _nope!_"

With that he seized both women by the hand and yanked them away just as an agent came lumbering towards them, arms slicing through the air where Jackie had stood an instant before. The Doctor sprinted for the lunchroom doors, tugging Rose and Jackie along, but one of the operatives caught Jackie and wrenched her back.

"Rose—!" Jackie cried out and in a blink, all the noise left Rose's head as her UNIT training screamed in like a freight train. Whipping round, Rose punched the heel of her palm into the agent's wrist, breaking his arm and his grasp before she shoved her mother away to safety. The next suit that lunged for Jackie was met with a knee to the groin and an uppercut to the jaw. Swiping a chair, Rose whipped it at another agent, striking him in the face with a satisfying _thwack _that threw him bodily backward into the rest of his fellows, knocking them all down in a heap of limbs and screeches.

The Doctor looked on in open-mouthed shock. "What the hell was _that_?" he spluttered as Rose darted back to him, grabbing him by the hand.

"You're not the only one who's changed!" she shouted, pulling him and Jackie in a run.

At the lunchroom entrance, Rose threw aside the plastic sheeting and flipped open the lock, pushing the doors open before springing out into the hall. Knowing she had only seconds before the agents caught up to them, Rose cast all about the corridor, searching desperately for anything that would hold them back—

"Here!" called the Doctor, rushing over to the pile of caretaker's mops and brooms Rose had knocked to the floor in her earlier haste. He tossed a mop her way and she shoved the pole through the door handles just in time for the agents to hurl themselves against the doors with a mighty _WHAM_. The force of the impact threw Rose and Jackie to the floor, but Rose glanced back to see that even though the doors were bowing outward, the metal-handled mop bucking violently with every hit and slam, the makeshift barricade stayed put.

(But Jackie was trembling and Rose could hear her wheezing now with every breath she took and—)

"Still think it's the Plague?" asked the Doctor as he helped Jackie off the floor, pulling her toward the lift.

"Were any of the other victims acting like that before they died?" asked Rose, following after them.

"Not that I'm aware of, though it's worth noting that our friends in there are acting like that _after _they died."

"Wait—they're dead?" asked Jackie weakly. "But how comes they're moving and talking and everything?"

"Good question! Haven't got a clue."

They reached the lift but before Rose had the chance to tell the Doctor it wouldn't work—emergency protocol—they had to turn round—they had to go back—he whipped out the sonic and the doors split open in front of him, like magic. Wheezing as she hobbled inside, Jackie clutched at her chest, her face pinched in discomfort.

"How do you know they're dead?" she choked out.

"Fluid in the lungs," the Doctor explained, sidling in after her and pulling Rose inside. "You could hear it in their voices, I'm sure—I could hear it in their breathing. A ridiculous amount of nonmucosal viscous fluid blocking the primary, secondary, and tertiary bronchii—no human could survive that."

He punched in the floor command and slammed the doors-close button. "They're all dead, Jackie. I'm sorry."

Jackie coughed and winced at the sound of it. Eyes screwed shut, she slumped back against the lift wall, and Rose darted over to her side as she fought for air, forcing it in and out of her lungs with great effort. In, out. _In, out_. Like she'd done so many times, without even trying, without even thinking. (Like the people out there would never do again. And was it just Rose, or did Jackie's breathing sound so much wetter than before?)

The lift arrived with a cheerful _ding _and the next thing Rose knew, Jackie was sliding down the wall with a groan. But she never met the floor; the Doctor stopped her with a hand on each shoulder, looping an arm round her afterward to heave her back upwards. With a grunt, he hauled her out of the lift, half-supporting, half-dragging her toward the infirmary.

"What's gonna happen to her?" asked Rose, supporting her mother from the other side. "She's not gonna end up like those others, is she?"

The Doctor glanced at her and his voice was sharp despite his reassuring smile.

"_No_."


	4. Chapter 4

Fluttering lids and lashes and fluorescent lights flickered overhead, _on, off, on_—

"—an emergency, please, open the doors!"

—_light, dark_—

Voices, some she knew, some she didn't. The push and pull of a tide. An ocean full of life; bodies, packed together like fish. Murmuring.

"Move—out of the way!"

Scuffling and a _whoosh _sound, something out of Star Trek (or was it Star Wars?), a brisk breeze or an opening door, and her chest was so full that it ached, pounding like a lorry had hit her full-force, and she couldn't breathe, and it _hurt— _

"Mrs. Tyler?" asked a voice, briskly, and a light shone into Jackie's eyes from far away, white-hot and bright, slicing through the darkness like a knife. "Mrs. Tyler, can you hear me?"

Mouth opened but nothing emerged except a weak, strained wheeze, like one of those old people with the emphysema and the breathing-machines, and was that _her…_?

"...patient appears to be suffering from pulmonary edema and acute hypoxia among other—"

"Oxygen, she needs oxygen, _now_!"

The world tilted on its axis and she was falling—no, she was flying—no, someone or something was lift-lift-lifting her up, and then she was lying down, something soft beneath her, and she blinked and there was something on her face, a nasty plastic thing that smelled of rubber and hospitals, but at least she could breathe again, even if blackness was bleeding back into the corners of her vision.

"Mum!" cried out Rose's voice over the sounds of frantic beeping and someone muttering "No no no no Jackie, don't you dare quit on me, _don't you dare_—"

Jackie's eyes rolled back and Rose shouting was the last thing she heard.

* * *

For several long and agonizing moments it was far too quiet in the little grey room, the infirmary silent but for the sound of the heart monitor's chipper little _beep-beep beep-beeps_. The Doctor listened to Jackie's breaths and counted down the measures of her pulse and scrutinized her from head to toe as she lay on the cot, sure to hang back at a minimum safe distance while the attending physician checked up on Jackie's vitals, pressing her stethoscope to Jackie's sternum and stomach. After double- and triple-checking his observations, running numbers and scenarios in his head rapid-fire, the Doctor allowed himself to relax a little.

"How is she, doctor?" asked Rose, gripping the side of the cot hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

"Eh, blood pressure's a little lower than I'd like," replied the Doctor. "Fever's coming down thanks to the painkillers, antibiotics should help in the case of infection, but of course she's still got the fluid in the lungs, sounds like a few microliters more than I'm comfortable with, might have to consider a nitrate treatment, maybe dobutamine if things get dicey, but she's stable enough for the time-being, or appears to be, anyway."

Rose and the physician both stared at him.

The Doctor scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Right! Medical doctor, lowercase 'd'. Of course. Got it. Carry on."

"As he said, she's stable for the moment," the physician explained. "It's a good thing you got her here when you did—a few minutes later, I'm not sure what I could have done."

"Rubbish twenty-first century medicine," laughed the Doctor. "One does what one can."

The physician frowned at him, blinking uncertainly over her surgeon's mask. "I'm sorry. Who are you?"

"Right! Didn't exactly have time for introductions earlier, did we?" The Doctor gave a little wave. "I'm the Doctor. Nice to officially meet you. And you go by...?"

"Sarah Saito, MBBS. Just call me Saito." Saito peeled off a glove to shake the Doctor's hand. "Now. _The Doctor_. Wouldn't happen to be the same bloke that helped with the Cyberman outbreak a few years back?"

The Doctor beamed. "Indeed I would be! How'd you know?"

Saito gestured to Rose. "Agent Tyler's mentioned you a time or a dozen. _The Doctor would do thi_s, _the Doctor would say that_—"

"Has anyone else made it to the infirmary so far?" Rose interrupted. "Anyone else presenting symptoms, I mean?"

"Yes, I'm treating another live patient with this condition."

"How are they doing?" asked Rose.

Saito hesitated, glancing between Rose and the Doctor. Whatever the answer was, the Doctor knew it could be summarized as _Not well_.

"Let's focus on our objectives here," the Doctor said quickly. "Education, containment, prevention. What are we dealing with, where did it come from, how does it spread, how do we keep it from spreading further?"

Rose nodded. "And how do we cure Mum and anyone else who may be sick?"

"And that's where _education _comes in. We learn what this thing is, we learn how to stop it."

"What do we know about this thing so far?" Rose asked Saito.

"Not much," Saito admitted. "We've got security looking into the situation, trying to suss out whether this is a natural outbreak or the byproduct of biological warfare, and the medical field team is upstairs collecting what samples they can. But the quarantine protocols seem to be interfering with our network connection; we haven't received any reports or updates for a while now."

"Probably a couple of reasons for that," the Doctor muttered darkly.

"Point is, we're in the dark down here until the connection is restored."

Rose swore under her breath. "What can we do for Mum in the meantime?"

Saito hesitated once more, removing her glasses in a bid for time. Not a good sign, the Doctor knew.

"Agent Tyler," said Saito, not unkindly. She tucked her glasses in her labcoat-pocket. "Your mother is very ill—"

"I know. What can we do for her?"

"Run some tests," Saito replied. "Make her comfortable."

Rose glared at her, then turned to the Doctor. "What can we do?" she asked.

In other circumstances, the Doctor might have felt inordinately pleased that Rose turned to him for help, but—well, no, there was no _but_, he was just as pleased as he would be any other time, he just had the good sense to hide it at that moment. "If we're lucky, the antibiotics will take care of everything, just whoosh the whole nasty thing out of her system and usher her straight into healing, but I don't particularly feel like banking on luck here, and I'd imagine you don't either," he replied. "We really need to figure out a way to reverse or at least halt the contagion's sanguinary alterations."

"You mentioned that earlier, that this thing was changing the victims' blood."

"Exactly. Deoxygenation is our major concern at the moment. The oxygen mask is helping to prevent oxygen-starvation, but ultimately, it's a plaster, not a cure." He considered. "Now, if we could devise a method of speeding up platelet production…"

Saito frowned. "What are you thinking?"

"Oxygen enrichment," the Doctor murmured thoughtfully. "Replenishing the depleted supply, so to speak. Replacing the damaged cells with healthy ones. The problem is, even though the human body is constantly producing new platelets and plasma, it can only manufacture so much so quickly. But! There were some very promising rapid-platelet-production techniques introduced sometime between the twenty-first and twenty-third centuries—you've got access to a somatic 3D printer and hematopoietic printing material, right?"

"What about a transfusion?" asked Rose. "Like a blood transfusion. Would that help?"

"Could do, if you had a ready match."

"I don't know if that's possible," said Saito. "The blood bank is inaccessible due to quarantine—"

"I'm a match," Rose replied.

"—and with a direct transfusion, there are too many factors to take into account—"

"How do you know?" asked the Doctor.

"—such as screening for potential disease—"

"Mum's donated to me a couple times."

"—which, as you mentioned, we haven't exactly got the time for—"

Wide-eyed in alarm, the Doctor frowned. "Why?"

"—and I don't know if I could, in good conscience, endorse or participate in such activity—"

"Occupational hazard. Look, it's not relevant, all right?" Rose said impatiently. "Do you want my blood or not?"

"Are either of you even remotely listening to me?" asked Saito, exasperated.

"No," Rose and the Doctor both replied.

Saito huffed. "Of course not. And are either of you licensed medical practitioners, by any chance?"

Fishing out the psychic paper, the Doctor presented it with a flick of the wrist. "Depends. What does this say?"

"It just says you know everything."

"It's not wrong," said the Doctor, pocketing the paper with a grin.

"But you don't know what this is, what we're dealing with."

"_Yet_," the Doctor replied cheerfully. "I don't know _yet_. But I intend to find out. Hence the aforementioned _education_. Weren't you listening?"

Fishing around in his pockets, he found the sandwich generously gifted to him earlier. "You need to eat," he said, tossing the sandwich Rose's way.

Rose caught the sandwich, wrinkling her nose. "Did this come from Miranda? Is it safe?"

"It is; the sonic would have picked up on it, otherwise. And you need to eat something if you're going to give blood."

"I can't even begin to list all the ways your proposal violates the Hippocratic Oath," Saito protested.

"Hippocrates! Great man, decent gambler, still owe him twelve drachma," said the Doctor, hands in pockets as he waltzed lazily over to the door. "Or is it Euros now? Did they convert in this universe as well? I'll have to find out. Another opportunity for education!"

"Where are you going?" asked Saito. "You can't leave the building while we're under quarantine."

"Oh don't worry; I shan't. Just popping out for a bit of R&R—that's Research and Reconnaissance, by the way, not Rest and Recuperation, no rest for the wicked, after all—and I'll be back before you know it. Oh, and you should probably call someone to take care of that little zombie problem up in the cafeteria."

"Zombies?" Saito asked faintly. "Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?"

The Doctor flashed her a grin. "Nope!"

"Be careful!" Rose called after him.

He spun round at the door. "If you insist," he said, offering a cheeky wink before he popped open the door and stepped out into the dark.

* * *

Rose's gaze lingered on the door all through her call with security, her brow furrowed in worry, like if she stared hard enough, the Doctor might waltz back in, smug but safe and sound.

"So," said Saito, gathering supplies as Rose ended her call. "Still fancy him, then?"

Rose blushed. "Just shut up and take my blood."

* * *

For some unfathomable reason, for a brief time after she and the Doctor joined company, Donna was obsessed with those ghost-hunting programs, the ones where fellows with tape-recorders and slicked-back hair stroll around empty buildings late at night trying, desperately, to make something out of nothing. Amused to no end, the Doctor would look on and shake his head as Donna watched the programs with rapt attention, her eyes glued to the blokes wandering around onscreen with their green night-vision goggles, playing with tape recorders and radio signals and pulling random words out of the noise and jumping at every little shadow that crossed their path. The Doctor, pages deep in some dusty old tome or days deep into whatever half-constructed project lay strewn about him on the library settee and coffee table, would chuckle and insult the program under his breath, meeting Donna's protests of _Oi, we deal with this sort of thing all the time, don't we? Who's to say they're not every bit as legitimate as we are?_ with an exaggerated eye-roll and an assertion that no, these programs do _not _include actually feature any ghosts, _at best they're an incorporeal wavelength lifeform, Donna, terribly common and not at all as exciting as television paints them out to be, and besides, ghosts have much better things to do than make funny noises on radio waves_. Sometimes the Doctor would tease Donna dreadfully, trying to convince her with mock-sincerity that that tiny critter on Falbrath IX was actually a paranormal entity or those rattling pipes in that old mansion was actually _definitely a ghost, Donna! Quick, let's take the TARDIS back to 1996 and nab a tape-recorder!_

Now, the Doctor suppressed a shudder. Creeping through the darkened halls, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone lurked over his shoulder at that very moment, that the shadows painting the empty corridor were something more than inky darkness pooling in the dim starlight. He said a silent belated apology to Donna—if ever there was a haunted building, late-night UNIT headquarters would be it.

Soon the sounds of scuffling boots and plasticky crinkles and hushed voices in the stairwells informed the Doctor that UNIT had already dispatched a squadron of HAZMAT-suited agents in response to Rose's call to take care of their little zombie problem, and blimey, that was fast. The Doctor opted to carry out his reconnaissance mission in a calmer area instead, popping open the door to one of UNIT's communal office spaces with a furtive glance and a buzz of the sonic. He crept quietly through, cataloging everything around him, from the potted plants to the fluorescent lights flickering overhead, from the hardwood floor to the white-tiled cubicles stretching as far as the eye could see. Just your standard posh office workspace, even if a sense of foreboding lay over the place, settling in the walkways and the empty desks, thick like an autumn fog.

The Doctor picked the first computer that caught his eye and sat down, knocking something off the desk in the process. He plucked the _something_ off the floor and chuckled. It was a Yoda bobble-head figurine, of all things. Hideously ugly and completely tasteless. He loved it.

"You and me, then?" he said. "Yoda and the Doctor. Seems fitting, somehow."

Setting Yoda back on his rightful perch, the Doctor turned his attention back to the computer, aiming his sonic at the screen and cracking the passcode. He bypassed the firewalls to the secure server within moments, easy as rewiring a verteron resistance accelerator. So this sonic was every bit a magic wand as much as the last one, it would seem. Good to know.

(He refused to think of it as the _different_ sonic or the _other_ sonic; it looked and felt and acted the same as his old one, it _was_ the same as his old one, even down to the funny little dent beneath the atomic accelerator. So it was might as well _be_ the same, might'nt it? He wouldn't even have known it wasn't originally his, if Rose hadn't told him. Though that notion opened up another can of worms entirely.)

"Think I'll ever hear the rest of that story?" the Doctor asked bobble-head Yoda, whose head shook nonsensically in reply. Hardly a helpful response, but then again, Yoda did always have that annoying habit of speaking in opacities.

Fingers flying over the keyboard and eyes darting over the screen, the Doctor located and scanned over every report he could find, everything the medical team managed to upload before their unfortunate transition into zombie-hood. But so little time had lapsed since the beginning of the outbreak that UNIT hadn't been able to run but a few tests, and what few tests they had managed to run had generated no concrete theories or results. (And of course, there was no mention of zombies or otherwise reanimated corpses to be found. If only the medical team had thought to document their experiences as they were undergoing them. Though the Doctor imagined the reports would probably just read something along the lines of "I was quite warm, and now I'm a zombie; I don't care for it; _mlaaaarggghhg brains._") The only helpful tidbit the Doctor could filter from the mush was that one or two of the medical officers suggested the contagion could be extraterrestrial in origin, before they themselves contracted said contagion.

"And in their protective suits, no less," said the Doctor, frowning. If the medical team had contracted the illness even in their suits, then what guarantee did they have that the security and containment team wouldn't meet the same fate? But no, the Doctor thought; Rose would have told them everything they needed to know, and they would have responded accordingly, taking additional precautions—whatever additional precautions they could, anyway.

"I have to admit, this has me stymied," said the Doctor. "A mystery contagion, no idea what it is or where it came from or who might have brought it here or why. Or how it reanimates the dead, for that matter. But they're not technically zombies, not really, unless Sibelius Crow is hiding somewhere nearby and I just haven't noticed. Which is highly doubtful, to say the least."

Bobble-head Yoda did not reply, save to bobble his head unhelpfully when poked. The Doctor sighed in frustration. "The only thing in here that's even halfway noteworthy is a report on the new paint job and some complaints of mold. These reports are _literally_ as boring as watching paint dry, and just as useless."

(Except the medical team _had _said something helpful, hadn't they? Even if they hadn't meant to, even if they'd been dead when they said it. _Give it to us_, they'd hissed at him back in the cafeteria, and they'd indicated that Jackie was what they were after. But why?

And if the medical team truly was dead then who was it, exactly, that had been talking to him?)

"I mean, _extraterrestrial in origin_ hardly narrows things down, does it?" murmured the Doctor.

Yoda nodded sympathetically.

"My thoughts exactly," the Doctor agreed.

Blinking past the blur that threatened to creep over the edges of his vision, the Doctor squinted at the computer screen for several moments before realizing, with no small amount of disgruntlement, that in this new human body he may actually need reading glasses. Well, wasn't that just _wizard. _Donna's faulty human DNA was clearly to blame.

He clicked through file after file after email after report until _finally _something interesting piqued his attention. He sat up in his chair, eyebrow arching in surprise.

"Now here's something," he murmured. "According to this report, none of the blood samples taken from the victims displayed any presence of antibodies. Strange in its own right; your body's always got antibodies ready to fight off foreign contaminants, extraterrestrial origins or no. Bodies are sort of handy that way."

He flashed Yoda a cheeky grin, wriggling the fingers of his good fightin' hand. "Get it? _Handy_?"

Bobble-head Yoda did not respond.

"You're right," said the Doctor with mock-sternness. "This is no time for puns. Though I'm personally of the opinion that most times are good times for puns.

"So despite the unusually high temperatures of the victims at the time of death, we're not actually looking at a fever here, because a fever is just the body's way of fighting back, but whatever we're dealing with completely dismantles the body's ability to defend itself," the Doctor continued, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Ergo, it's probably not a virus or disease of any sort. What it _is _is something that shuts down the body's defense mechanisms, spreads alarmingly quickly, and appears to be immune to the usual precautions and even extra precautions. However—and this is worth noting," he offered to Yoda, as an aside, "it only seems to affect certain people. Rose, for instance, hasn't begun to suffer any ill effects, and presumably there are dozens of others in the building who are uninfected as well. Is it only a matter of time for them, have they simply managed to avoid contamination somehow, or is there some important physiological difference between the healthy and the infected?"

Bobble-head Yoda was, as usual, silent and withholding.

"Fat lot of help you are," said the Doctor cheerfully. "But at least now we know our next step: finding the similarities between our various victims. Shall we?"

Easier said than done; a scan of each victim's personnel file revealed far more differences than similarities. There was Miranda, a not-quite-middle-aged dinner lady, followed closely by the second victim, a more-than-middle-aged nighttime caretaker, and a third victim, an office worker who took ill and died immediately after stepping foot in the building. Then you had the medical team, not one of them alike, and the mysterious second victim in Saito's care, receiving treatment along with Jackie. Strangely, according to the report, the young man fell ill after being bundled into sickbay with several others, but he appeared to be the only one affected. So far, no one else in sickbay had begun to exhibit any symptoms whatsoever. At least he was still alive, even if his condition was a little dicey; the other victims had all died within moments. The Doctor tried not to think of what that meant for Jackie.

He scowled. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't find a single factor to connect the dots between Jackie and the other victims, not age, not gender, not ethnicity, not vocation nor location nor general health or anything else, save that they all worked in this building, and they were all (presumably) human. Factor in the unusual symptoms, the highly irregular behavior re: antibodies, the likelihood of non-Earth origin, the reanimation of the bodies after death, and the absence of other markers indicating an infection related to viruses, diseases, or bacteria, and you had—

—a Doctor who was still completely stumped, and a Jackie who was running out of time.

"Rubbish," the Doctor announced. "The medical team just overlooked something, that's all. Not that I can blame them; I'm certain they were rather busy getting infected and turned into zombies and such. But if you want something done right…"

He pushed back from the desk, offering a brisk nod to bobble-head Yoda. "So long, then. But a word of advice, one supercentenarian to another: 900 years is no excuse to let yourself go."

Jogging to the office doors, the Doctor quietly pushed them open, sticking his head out into the darkened hallway and glancing both ways. Of course, with the active quarantine in place, the hall was deserted, free of any over-enthusiastic UNIT agent that may attempt to apprehend and re-quarantine him, though something about the faulty fluorescent lights flickering queasily overhead made the Doctor uneasy. He couldn't shake the feeling of something crawling up his spine, even as he busied himself locating the UNIT floor directory, scanning it for the location of their laboratory.

A click at the end of the hall caused his head to whip round, his gaze sharpening, scanning the area for the source of the noise. But nothing unusual greeted his senses, just walls and ceiling tiles and potted plants and that never-ending flicker overhead. He took a few steps forward and gave a good long look at the door at the end of the hallway anyway, just to be safe.

Nothing. Just a nagging little buzz-hum rattling around the back of his head, probably the cheap overhead lighting. UNIT really should replace it all.

Shrugging, the Doctor turned back to the directory, only to jump back in shock.

Miranda stood there.

* * *

Rose tried very hard not to stare at the other patient behind the glass, averting her eyes as best she could while Saito wheeled in her mother into the observation room and arranged a more longterm setup. ("Technically a breach of protocol, bringing a patient in here for treatment," Saito had explained moments before, "but this is the easiest way to keep an eye on everyone. That's what comes of being the only physician on the graveyard shift, I suppose. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that."). But Rose's curiosity got the better of her, and there she found herself. Staring.

The patient lay in the other room all alone, prone atop a hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling through glassy dark eyes; his skin had faded to a papery nigh-translucent white, and his fingernails and lips and eyes were stained utterly black, as if painted with ink. Between the oxygen mask strapped to his face and the tubes plugged in seemingly willy-nilly all over his body, the poor young man looked like a machine more than anything, like a cyborg or maybe Darth Vader peeled halfway out of his protective black shell. He was totally still, save for the stilted breaths that entered and left his body with a watery wheeze; Rose couldn't help but think he already looked like a corpse. Rose kept glancing through the window at him as she shed her trusty leather jacket and Saito seated her and prepared her for the transfusion. She watched him while Saito prodded at her arm for veins and swabbed the inside of her elbow with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. Even the bite of the needle in Rose's skin wasn't enough to tear her attention away.

White skin, watery wheeze, black-stained fingernails and lips and eyes; that poor fellow was knocking on Death's door, and Death was about to answer.

"So, Agent Tyler," said Saito, monitoring the transfusion tube as it pumped blood straight from Rose's arm into her mother's. "It's been a while since you last visited medbay. How've you been—"

"You don't need to do that," Rose interrupted.

Saito shot a glance over her spectacles. "Do what?"

"Distract me, keep my mind off all this. I know it's part of the routine, but you don't need to worry about it with me."

"Agent Tyler—"

"Not _Agent_. It's just _Rose_, now."

Saito _hmphed_. "Welp, that answers the question of how you've been doing, at least."

"Yeah," said Rose flatly. "Been a lot better."

"Been a lot worse, too. I was actually just getting ready to commend you for going a whole three months without needing stitches or a cast."

"That you know of," replied Rose with a faint smile.

She quieted, looking over Jackie's limp body, at the blank expressionlessness of her face, deceptively peaceful beneath the oxygen mask. "S'weird," said Rose. "Usually I'm the one on the bed, and Mum's the one fretting over me. Never knew how hard it was to be on this side of things."

"Not a role reversal you particularly care for, hm?"

Sighing, Rose reached out with her free hand to push a stray hair out of Jackie's face. "This is why I told her not to come after me," she said quietly. "I knew something like this would happen. She's supposed to be safe, at home, away from all this stuff."

Her mouth twisted in unhappiness. "Why didn't she just stay put, like I told her to? I _told _her."

"Yes, because the Tyler women are notorious for following orders without question," Saito replied drily.

The urge to fling a lob of sarcasm swelled like bile in her throat but Rose did not reply, focusing on her mum instead. For several moments all that could be heard in the room was the pulsing of the heartrate monitors. Rose imagined she could hear accusations hidden in their tones, a rising chorus of _Your-fault Your-fault Your-fault_ echoing off the sterile white walls.

Something seemed to soften in Saito's features as she watched her. "Chin up, Rose," she said, her voice much gentler than usual. "How many times have you pulled something out of a nosedive at the last second? Besides, your Doctor bloke's here, isn't he? And didn't you tell me a hundred times what a miracle-worker he is? Even if his methods are highly questionable," she added, rolling her eyes. "But if anyone can help your mum, it's the two of you. Right?"

Rose hesitated. _I think like him_, he'd said. _Same memories, same thoughts, same everything_, he'd told her. Part of her wanted to believe him; it would be so easy to surrender to everything her gut was screaming to be the truth, to believe he could fix everything, just like before.

(That was one hell of a bet to hedge her mother's life on. Then again, what other option did she have?)

Rose swallowed hard. "Yeah," she replied quietly.

* * *

"What are you?" the Doctor asked.

Peering out from behind a ragged curtain of matted, oil-slicked hair, Miranda did not reply, or rather, her body did not; it watched the Doctor in silence, blinking just a fraction of a second too slowly, dark lids sliding over dull black eyes. Ichor dripped out of its mouth, trailing a path down, down, down its chin and throat and chest, staining Miranda's work uniform and filling the air with the cloying stench of damp and rotted things. Its veins were far more pronounced, now, a horror-movie spiderweb of pitch-black lines inked into its face and the tissue-thin paper of its sternum. Its hands hung dull and heavy at its sides, darkness pooling in its fingertips.

Anger flared up in the Doctor's chest, so burning-violent that his hands balled into fists and shook with the force of it. He fought to tamp it all down. He didn't have time for that sort of nonsense. More importantly, Jackie didn't have time. And besides, this wasn't about him; this was about helping those infected, preventing the infection of anyone else. He could punish himself for his oversights and shortcomings later.

He could punish this _thing_ later.

"The other bodies seemed to understand me. Do you?" he asked, louder this time. "What are you? And what are you doing here? And why?"

"You know who this body is," Miranda's body responded, its words slow and thick, its tongue weighing heavy in its mouth.

"I know who it _was_. Not so sure, now."

Miranda's body tilted its head, almost thoughtfully. "The Miranda. This is the Miranda."

"Except that's not true, is it? Not anymore." When Miranda's body fell silent again, the Doctor heaved a sigh in impatience. "Oh, come on, you know what I'm asking. No need to play coy, we're all friends here. Well, not friends so much as some sort of invasive contaminant and the person most voted most likely to try and kill it dead, but, you know. Potato, tomato."

"We need your help."

"Oh, do we now?" asked the Doctor, eyebrow piqued. "My help, specifically?"

"Yes."

"Well, isn't that something," the Doctor murmured, studying what used-to-be-Miranda's face, like maybe something in its ichor-darkened features would give its intentions away. "Curiouser and curiouser. Do you even know who I am?"

"Traveler," Miranda's body hissed. "Magic-maker. Time-bender. Death-bringer."

"That last one's a little melodramatic," muttered the Doctor. "How do you know all of this?"

Miranda's body shook its head. "Not important. We need help."

"Well, why don't you tell me what _we_ are, and I'll see what_ I_ can do."

"Help us," it hissed.

"Tell me what you are," insisted the Doctor.

"Help us."

"Tell me what you are."

"_Help first_."

"Nope!" said the Doctor cheerfully, and good grief, wouldn't that horrible buzzing noise overhead ever cease? "You want my help, you answer my questions. That's how it goes. No other way, no other choice. So one last time before I start to get testy: _what are you_?"

"Not what," gritted out Miranda's body. "_Who_."

"Fine. Who are you?"

"We are us. Ourselves. Legion. No name. Can't tell anything more. Not before help."

"Oh, but you've already told me so much, just now," said the Doctor, rocking back on his heels. "See, your use of _we_ indicates the plural, moreover the persistent use of _we_ in lieu of any other pronoun indicates a lack of sense of individual self, and that, coupled with your insistence that you're a _who_, not a _what_, yet you've got no name—well, that sounds an awful lot like a hive mind, doesn't it? And it's clear you're not local, not unless this Earth has got some _very _funny little quirks the other one hasn't; an extraterrestrial hive mind, then. Oh, but what need has an extraterrestrial hive mind got for human bodies, hm? Human bodies, but not human brains. Make that a parasitic extraterrestrial hive mind. A parasitic extraterrestrial hive mind that, somehow and for some reason, has the capability to possess humans—"

The lights flickered again overhead and the Doctor snapped his fingers in revelation. "_Ah_, not _some_how—telepathy, _that's _how!" he said excitedly, pointing to the lights above him. "That pesky flickering, that's you lot, isn't it? Interference with the electronics due to a low-level telepathic field. Explains that horrible intermittent buzzing sound, too—actually, anytime you'd like to knock that off would be fine by me, still got that post-regeneration extra-sensitivity and it feels a bit weird in the teeth. Although to be fair, the new teeth always feel a bit weird, so maybe that one's on me.

"And that explains why you'd know certain things, doesn't it? Like my identity, all that—your telepathy has granted you access to your victims' memories. You probably know everything about me that Jackie does. And _oh_!" he shouted as realizations struck him, one after the other. "Oh, that explains why the protective suits don't make a difference, as well! Telepathic possession isn't like an infection or a virus or bacteria or disease, it's not strictly physical, it doesn't care if you've got antibodies or a protective suit. So you possess your victims, override their consciousness with yours via telepathy, and you mutate their bodies after, killing them in the process. That makes you a telepathic, infectious, fast-spreading, parasitic, zombie-generating extraterrestrial hive mind, with a nasty little side serving of murder."

He glanced up at the Miranda-thing with a sharp grin, feeling _very _proud of himself. Certainly Rose couldn't help but be impressed, if she saw him right now.

"How am I doing, so far?" he asked.

The corpse did not reply.

"So that brings us to the million-dollar question, which is: Why are you doing all of this?" the Doctor asked thoughtfully. "Why are you infecting humans, why are you killing them? Why are you changing their bodies on the molecular level? And why have you only targeted some of them, as opposed to others? Not that I'm complaining—broadly speaking, the fewer people you murder, the better—but why choose one human over another? Or have you even got a choice, or is it something else altogether? Just, _why_?"

"Wasting time," rasped Miranda's body.

"Whose time?"

"Yours," it replied, its voice a snake slithering through the leaves. "Hers."

"Now that sounds an awful lot like a threat," replied the Doctor. He chuckled darkly. "Something you should know about me: I don't take well to threats."

"Not a threat. A promise," hissed the corpse. "Help us, or she dies."

* * *

As soon as the transfusion was complete, the needle removed and the tube with it and everything swabbed and bandaged and clean, Rose grabbed her jacket and slipped it back on, wrapping it snugly round her frame. Warmth suffused her bones and she sighed in relief; she felt much better with the jacket on, shielding her like a protective shell. Not to mention, giving all that blood had made her terribly cold. And a little sleepy too. Or maybe that was just the overall lack of sleep.

"You feeling all right?" asked Saito, concerned. "You look a little pale."

"M'fine," Rose lied.

"If you're feeling faint or anything, you should let me know."

Rose pulled her jacket tighter. "Don't worry about me. Worry about my mum."

"Agent Tyler—I mean, Rose—"

"What should we be doing for her?" Rose asked.

Saito huffed impatiently behind her surgeon's mask. "_I_ will continue monitoring her and running tests. _You_ don't need to be doing anything right now, except having a bite to eat. And maybe a lie-down."

"I don't want—"

"Too bad. You gave blood; you need a snack. Doctor's orders. _Two _doctors' orders."

Rose _hmphed_. "Fine," she said, grudgingly reaching for her sandwich. "I'll eat, and then you'll tell me how I can help."

"Eh, truth be told, there's not much you can do, unless we hear something different from your bloke."

"He's not my bloke," said Rose as she peeled back the clingfilm.

She could tell Saito was struggling not to roll her eyes. "Well, until Not-Your-Bloke gets back, help me keep an eye on your mum, and keep her company," she replied, peeling off her gloves. "That's basically all you can do."

Saito started to stand up, but hesitated. "A word of advice, if I might?"

Rose nodded at her to proceed.

"I'd like to think we have a good shot at saving your mother," Saito told her. "I'll do absolutely everything I can to help her. Knowing your family, she may survive out of sheer stubbornness, much as anything. But in my experience, it's generally wise to hope for the best, whilst preparing for the worst."

Rose's hands trembled around the sandwich, clenching squeakily in the clingfilm. She forced them still. "Are you saying I should start planning her funeral?"

"No. But if there's anything you want to tell her, now would be the time. Doesn't matter if she's unconscious. Better to say something now than risk leaving it unsaid." Pushing up from the stool, Saito laid a gentle hand on Rose's shoulder. "Take it from someone who knows firsthand, Rose. Regret is a terrible thing."

Swallowing, Rose nodded again. Saito gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze before she left the room, and now it was just Rose and her mother, and an atmosphere thick with uncertainty. Rose watched her mother as she slept, her eyes motionless beneath her eyelids, her mouth parted beneath the oxygen mask, her hands cold and still. She looked nowhere near as bad as the patient in the room beyond, but she was awfully pale, and the blackness in her fingernails had spread. Already, she looked like a ghost.

_Your-fault, your-fault, your-fault _chimed the heartrate monitors.

Rose clenched her eyes tight against the fear and guilt that threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn't do that right now. She couldn't give in. She had to be strong, for her mum. She had to help her fight. She had to help her _win_.

"Right," she said, breathing out a shaky exhale. Rose set the sandwich down on the empty stool, scooting closer to her mother. She reached out and grabbed her mum's hand, flinching when her mother did not respond. Worrying the inside of her cheek, Rose cast about for something to say. Anything. Anything at all.

(But her treacherous mind couldn't conjure up any words, could only show her the last time she'd held the hand of a body on a cot, and the Doctor's fingers were stiff and icy between hers, and it didn't matter how stubborn he was, he was still—)

Rose tightened her grip around Jackie's hand. She wouldn't let that happen to her mother. The fact that Rose hadn't got there in time to save the Doctor was irrelevant. She wouldn't let her mother die. She wouldn't. _She wouldn't_.

She gathered her breath and her courage. "So," Rose said, her voice trembling. "Mum. What do you want to talk about?"

* * *

"Killing one of my friends is an excellent way to ensure you'll never get my help in any capacity whatsoever," said the Doctor with a brightness that belied the anger in his eyes. "Now, do you want to try another approach, or shall I levy some threats of my own?"

Miranda's body blinked lazily, its lips falling open and closed, as if it were considering. "Help us and we will surrender your friend."

"And she'll be healthy? No more fluid in the lungs, no more burning up, no more risk of turning into whatever-the-hell-you-are?"

The corpse shook its head. "She will be restored."

"Excellent!" said the Doctor, clapping his hands. "That's a little more like it. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Home," breathed Miranda's body. "Help us go home."

"All right. Where are you from?"

"Far away. Very far away."

"Well, that's helpful," the Doctor said mildly. "You got yourselves here, why can't you get yourselves back?"

"Can't. Not without help."

"Why not? What, did you run out of pocket change for the intergalactic Underground?"

"We fell," said Miranda's body, and if the Doctor didn't know any better, he'd think its tone mournful. "There were holes in the world. In the earth and sky. The nothing came, and it ate all the stars."

"That sounds an awful lot like the Reality Bomb," the Doctor murmured.

"We saw it everywhere. Stars, gone. Worlds, gone. All of them, lost to the nothing. We fled, to outrun the hunger. To outrun its maw."

The corpse's tongue slithered out, running over its teeth, exploring the crannies and jagged edges of them as if, perhaps, considering them for the first time. Black fluid smeared around its mouth and the Doctor grimaced in disgust.

"It swallowed _everything_," Miranda's body whispered. "Nowhere left for us to go. We took refuge in the howling black. We thought we were safe in the dark. But the dark…"

Miranda's body shuddered. "It eats, too."

"So you fled to the Void?" asked the Doctor, half-impressed. "How'd you manage to survive that?"

The body twitched, a convulsion borne of memory and fear. "Didn't," it rasped.

"Then how are you here?"

"Heard the song of the Vortex, sung by the magic box. Followed it."

"_Magic box_," the Doctor hummed. "I can only imagine you mean the TARDIS. So you did a bit of extradimensional hitchhiking, then."

Miranda's body nodded. "We clung to the box and followed our hope. Searching for safety. But it was too late. Just shadows, now. Desperate to live."

"And the only way you could survive is by inhabiting the bodies of others," said the Doctor, suddenly understanding.

"Yes," whispered Miranda's body. "An unfortunate necessity. Sins committed so we may survive. But we smelled it, now, the return of the stars overhead. The nothing is gone. So now, we can go home."

It stepped forward, pleading. "We will claim no one else, if you take us home."

* * *

A small eternity had passed by, and still, Rose couldn't think of anything to say. She squeezed her mother's hand, wishing desperately that Jackie would squeeze back in response.

"I guess I should probably call Pete, yeah?" Rose said quietly, staring at the floor. "So he can come and talk to you too, so that he can—you know. Just in case—"

Her breath hitched in her throat. "Should he bring Tony, too?" she asked, forcing the words out even though they _hurt_. "I mean—no, he can't. Neither of them can come, can they? Not with the contagion. Can't risk them getting sick too, can we?"

Sighing, Rose leaned forward, propping herself up with her elbows on her knees. _God_, she was tired. Even just _thinking _was as exhausting as climbing a mountain.

"Video chat could work, though," she continued. "That way, we can make sure they both get to see you before—you know, if anything—like Saito said, about the worst—just—"

Rose sniffed loudly in the empty room, but Jackie's eyelids did not flutter, her mouth did not move. Her hand did not squeeze back.

"Just wake up, Mum," said Rose, and her cheeks felt suspiciously wet all of a sudden; surprised, she reached up to thumb away first one tear, then another, and another and one more. Her vision grew blurry and the pressure in her sinuses grew unbearable and before she knew it, the dam had split and tears were trailing down her cheeks, one after the other, growing fat at the curve of her jaw and dropping onto her jacket with a plasticky _splat_. Rose bit her lip to hold back the tears, but it was a halfhearted gesture because as horrible as it was to cry, as much as it made her feel like a small and stupid child, god, it was just such a _relief_.

"Wake up, please," she said again, sniffling, and tried not to think about what life would be like without her mother in it.

(Would it have felt the same, if she'd successfully stayed in the other universe, and all the paths had sealed shut behind her? Would the realization of Jackie's loss have struck her like it did now, pounding at her chest until she curled in on herself, until she withered under the weight of it all as the truth fully struck her that she would never ever see her mother again?

Lips pursed shut, Rose inwardly shook herself. No. This was nothing like that. It wasn't. It just _wasn't_.)

"I'm so sorry, Mum," Rose said thickly through her tears. "I didn't want to leave you behind. I never wanted to hurt you. Never, ever. But I wanted to get back so badly, and I thought—I don't know, I thought if I could just get back to the other universe, everything would work out all right in the end, somehow. You know? Like it would fill this hole inside me, the one that's been growing ever since we first came over here. I wouldn't feel empty anymore. I wouldn't feel _broken _anymore."

Pain welled up in her at the thought of those first few months after Canary Wharf, fresh and bleating as the day it happened, so much worse than the throbbing in her damaged fingers, all of it so loud she could barely think past it. But Rose forced herself to continue. "It all just hurt so much, Mum," Rose said, pleadingly. "Getting stranded here without the Doctor or the TARDIS—s'like, I'd had a _purpose _before, yeah? When I was with the Doctor, we'd travel all over, righting wrongs, fixing things. Helping people. But I didn't feel like I could do that properly here. I didn't—"

She sniffled, loudly. "I didn't feel like I could do it on my own. It was like someone had broken both my legs, and I couldn't walk anymore. But working on the Cannon, working on getting back—not just to get to the Doctor, but to stop the stars from going out overhead, to help people again—it gave me something, Mum. I had meaning again, I didn't feel so empty anymore. And then I worked so hard, for so long, that it was like everything about me, everything that makes me _me_, hinged on me succeeding, in getting back to him. Does that make sense?"

Rose swallowed. "I thought everything would turn out all right in the end, somehow. So I just tried not to think about it, yeah? How much I'd be giving up, to be with him again. You know?"

Silence was the reply.

"I should have told you all that upfront," Rose murmured. "But I was just—I dunno. After Canary Wharf, after Will, after Plymouth—"

Memories of burnt ozone and a room full of screams sliced through her vision and Rose clenched her eyes to close them out. Her lips clamped shut, the words burning her like scalding-hot coffee in her mouth, even now.

"After all that, and everything else," Rose tried again, her voice shaky, "I didn't want to let anyone in. I thought it would be easier that way, if anything bad did happen. _Hope for the best_, _prepare for the worst_, right? But the worst is here, Mum, and it's not like anything I planned for. Nothing I did made any difference, and now everything's gone wrong and you're sick and I don't know what to do and I'm not ready for any of it, I'm just not ready, I'm not—"

Her face crumpling so hard it _hurt_, Rose lapsed forward onto the hospital bed, surrendering to the gravity of her exhaustion and sorrow. Clenching Jackie's hand tight, she sobbed into the mattress. "Please don't go, Mum," Rose half-wept, half-choked. Great heaving sobs wracked her shoulders and she cried even harder, gasping for air. "You can't leave me. You can't. Please, Mum. _Please_."

Jackie did not respond.

Rose wept, and wept, and wept.

* * *

Scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably, the Doctor paused to consider. Even amidst his anger and disgust, he felt a small swell of sympathy for the creatures. They'd done what they felt they must in order to survive. They'd clawed their way past impossibility, banding together in the face of certain death. Theirs were actions borne of complete and utter instinct, the desire to live overriding everything else, leaving only fear and desperation behind.

That didn't change anything, though. Didn't reopen the holes between universes; didn't grant them a way to slip back through.

It didn't change the fact that they were killers.

"Please, take us home," said the corpse, reaching a ghostly hand toward the Doctor, palm up. Its veins were black and stark beneath moonlit flesh. A request writ in ink. A plea birthed in blood. "Please," it rasped again. "_Help us_."


	5. Chapter 5

Wrung out from crying until her tears ran dry and only choking sobs remained, Rose didn't hear the soft _thump-thump-thumping _overhead until perhaps the third thump or so.

Bleary-eyed, Rose pushed back from the mattress, glancing up hopefully-was it her mum somehow, was it Jackie trying to communicate with her? Had the Doctor returned?-but her mother hadn't moved, and there was no Doctor to be seen. Instead, Rose's eyes traveled upward until she saw a black-tipped finger pressed to the glass of the observation window, tapping weakly. Rose followed the line of the finger down to the arm, to the body, up to the neck and the head, where a pale face stared at her from the hospital bed, past cables and cords and an oxygen-mask.

Sniffling, Rose scrubbed the heel of her palm across her face, wiping the tears away. "Sorry, mate," she mumbled. "You're probably trying to rest, aren't you? I'll keep the noise down."

The patient shook his head, slowly. He tapped the window again.

Rose frowned. "Is something wrong?" she asked. "D'you need something? Should I go get Saito?"

Another slow shake of the head, and Rose watched as the patient's arm moved, his finger pointing. Rose followed the line of sight over her shoulder to see cabinets, a counter, a sink, a faucet...

A faucet, dripping water. _Ah_.

"Sure, no problem," she said, hastily dragging her jacket-sleeve across her face to break up the itchy-dry layer of tears and makeup that had crusted on her cheeks. God, she probably looked a mess. "Gotta be pretty thirsty, yeah? Let's get you a glass or something."

It was difficult to tell with the mask over his face, but Rose thought she saw the patient smiling a little bit. Flashing him a watery grin of her own, Rose pocketed her forgotten sandwich and turned to search the cabinets, to see if they had any paper cups or anything she could use. "Be over in a tic," she called to the other room. "Just got to get a cup or something, and a mask, too. Okay?"

The patient didn't reply, but that was all right; despite how deeply bone-tired she was, it was honestly a little bit of a relief for Rose to give her restless hands something to do, and it was a huge relief that the patient, while in tenuous condition, was still alive. That gave Rose hope for her mum. Gave her a lot of hope.

Busy searching the cabinets, she didn't notice the flatline crawling across a screen in the other room.

* * *

Miranda's body watched him, waiting. Expectant.

The Doctor slowly shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said, and he mostly meant it. "I can't help you."

Its eyelids fluttered in time with the lights flickering overhead. "Can't help?" Miranda's body asked, its voice dropping a register. "Or _won't_?"

"The semantics of it are hardly relevant at this juncture, but honestly, it's a mixture of both," the Doctor replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Even if I wanted to help you get back home-and that's a big _if_, considering that I'm not generally inclined to help murderers get what they want (and yes, in this case the semantics are relevant, because regardless of your motivations, you are, in fact, a bunch of murderers), but anyway-even if I wanted to help, I couldn't. The holes between realities are sealed once again. There's no way back."

"Liar," the body growled.

"Afraid not. Not this time."

"But the box—"

"The TARDIS is gone," the Doctor replied curtly. "Believe me, I'm not all that pleased about it, either."

"Liar!" Its face crumpled into an ugly grimace as it pointed an inkstained hand at the Doctor. "We smell it, we _smell_ the magic on you!"

The Doctor's hand closed around the lump of coral in his pocket. "I'm telling you, I can't get you across the Void again, magic box or not. But I'm sure we can work something else out."

"_No_."

"Oh, come on, now! It can't all be death and destruction and chaos. There's got to be another way. There always is, if you look hard enough."

"No," the corpse spat. "Home, or your friends die. There is no other way. _No other way. None._"

"Good grief, you're hopeless!" the Doctor said, pacing in exasperation. "_No other way_. What utter nonsense! How did you survive when you first arrived here, eh? You didn't just start snapping up bodies first thing, did you? There must have been some kind of transitional period, some way you survived before you started hijacking human bodies."

"Hardly anything left," Miranda's body told him. "What little survived, lived in the dark, and the damp. In warmth, and the cracks and depths of things."

"Sounds delightful. Why didn't you just stay put? Why'd you get the humans involved?"

"Burned," said the corpse, twitching with the memory of it. "Suffocated. Had to flee." It shivered, lips twitching. "Even now, it hurts us, scorching, eating away. Had to run."

It fixed its oily-black gaze on the Doctor. "Still running."

* * *

Rose adjusted her mask one last time and pulled on a pair of medical gloves with a satisfying _smack_ before sliding into the other room with a cupful of water and a heavy sigh. Whatever the Doctor was working on, she hoped he'd figure out everything soon, not just for the sake of her mum and the others, but because Rose was starting to feel like she might drop the floor at any moment.

She was so, so tired.

"There you go, mate," Rose said gently, steadying the patient's trembling hand as he slipped up his oxygen mask to sip from the cup. "I know they've got you hooked into fluids and things, but I bet you're still parched. And nothing beats a cold glass of water, yeah?"

Wordlessly, the patient nodded, glassy black eyes fixed on Rose.

"So I don't think we've met before," she said after he was done drinking, because the silence in the room was—well, she couldn't quite put a word to the wrongness of it. It felt almost oppressive, somehow. "Are you new to UNIT?" she asked.

The patient nodded again.

"Well, this is a hell of a new job orientation, isn't it?" said Rose, smiling wanly. "Sorry your welcome committee's so rotten. We don't normally chuck newbies straight into killer alien territory. We usually try to wait a reasonable amount of time. Like at least three weeks."

With a jerk, the patient chuckled, his chuckle devolving immediately into a cough. Rose winced on his behalf, moved to help fit the oxygen mask back in place over his nose and mouth. But the patient feebly pushed her hands away, opening his mouth to speak. Only a ragged whisper emerged.

"Come again?" asked Rose.

"Jared," the patient rasped through fluid-filled lungs. "Name. Yours?"

"Agent—I mean, Rose," said Rose, internally kicking herself. "Rose Tyler."

She held out her hand for Jared to shake, and he took it. Rose forced herself not to wince at the weakness of his grip or the heat of his skin, burning even through the medical glove. "Nice to meet you, Jared."

"Mother?" asked Jared, tilting his head toward Jackie in the other room.

Sighing, Rose nodded, watching her mum through the window. "Yeah," she said quietly. "That's my mum. She's in the same state you are. Well, sort of. I mean, she's still—you know. She—"

"Looks much better?" Jared coughed.

"I was going to say something at least a little more tactful than that," Rose replied, and Jared laughed again, stifling a cough against his hand. Rose handed him the water cup again and he sipped at it, his face pinched in pain.

"You sure you don't need me to go get Saito?" Rose asked, and held up the oxygen-mask, ready to slide it back into place.

Jared shook his head and pushed the mask away. "Just wanted water. Thank you."

"You're very welcome," Rose replied, yawning.

"Tired?" asked Jared.

"You've got no idea." Rose frowned. "Or maybe you do. I think you're a little worse off than me, at the mo."

"A little bit," Jared chuckled, his chuckles subsiding back into a horrid, violent cough. Concerned, Rose reached for his oxygen-mask again, but he slapped her hands away—forcefully, this time.

"No," Jared rasped. "No more."

Rose frowned. "Are you sure you don't—"

"No more."

"But you need oxygen, Saito said-"

"_No_," snapped Jared. "_We don't want it!_"

Rose's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Jared's sudden sharpness discomfited her, set alarm bells ringing vaguely at the back of her head, distressingly loud in the quiet room. But she couldn't quite put a finger on it, couldn't quite place what felt so _wrong_.

(Of course it made sense, Rose tried to reason through the exhaustion-fog clouding her head, that Jared might be angry or irritable—she could only imagine how angry she would be, if an unknown killer contagion was slowly eating her from the inside out. But that didn't explain why he would turn down medical treatment, though-and why wasn't Saito anywhere to be seen? And why was it _so bloody quiet_ in there?)

Eyes flickering round the room, Rose's gaze landed on the monitors next to Jared's bed. Several of the cables sat dangling, unplugged from the wall, rendered mute and useless for the purpose of monitoring Jared's vitals. But maybe Jared had just grown tired of the incessant beeps and chimes, Rose tried to reason to herself. That seemed understandable enough.

Either that, Rose thought with a mounting sense of dread, or Jared simply didn't want anyone to monitor his vital signs.

Now the alarms ringing in her head were positively screeching.

"Sure thing," Rose replied, forcing an easy and casual smile on her face as she set down the cup and backed away, slowly, under Jared's wide-eyed and glassy glare. "I'll just leave you to it, shall I…?"

She turned to open the door, then paused, her exhausted brain working overtime to catch up.

"Hang on," she said. "Did you say _we _just now?"

A glance over at Jared revealed a slow smile crawling across charcoal-black teeth.

"Oops," he said, softly.

* * *

"Yes, but _what_ burned, _what_ suffocated?" the Doctor demanded. "What's eating away at you? None of this makes any sense—it's like you're talking about something huge, huge but somehow invisible, just these massive environmental changes forcing you to evacuate, but then why hasn't anyone else noticed it? I looked over the reports and nothing's changed in UNIT headquarters in the last twenty-four hours, nothing except—"

He stopped pacing. _Except for reports of fresh paint_, he remembered. _Fresh paint, because of the—_

"Mold," he said slowly, disbelieving.

He turned to face Miranda's body again, mind racing furiously with the realization, and it was like water rushing into a canyon, filling in the gaps of the story.

"You're _mold_," the Doctor said, louder now.

The corpse did not respond.

"That's got to be it, hasn't it?" asked the Doctor, growing more excited by the second. "It said in the reports, this building got a sudden case of mold. Black mold! And they tried to get rid of it, they must have done—and the chemicals they'd use, those would burn, and then the caretakers would paint over the stain—of course!" the Doctor shouted, hands running through his hair as his thoughts raced wildly inside. "Of course, you'd try to escape the burn of the bleach and the suffocation of the paint, but where else would you think to go, where else would suit you, what else is warm and cozy and damp and made up of oh-so-much water? Well, the human body's just a perfect candidate, isn't it? And it makes total sense, if you think about it-so many of the symptoms correlate with mold-related conditions like histoplasmosis or aspergillosis! Cos naturally, if you want to transform your human host into a forever-home, not just one you occupy telepathically, but one you inhabit physically, one you _live_ in, you've got to make some significant changes to the chemical makeup, haven't you? Changes that make a human body compatible _with_ _sentient_ _mold!_"

The Doctor whooped out loud, quite pleased with himself. "Ha! Telepathic killer mold from outer space—now that's a new one, even for me! New new Doctor, indeed!"

"Now you know our secret. So help us," Miranda's body hissed, stalking toward the Doctor. "You must. This is what you do. This is who you are."

"Yeah, about that," said the Doctor, his nose scrunching up in thought. "Did I mention I'm having something of an identity crisis today?"

Grinning like the madman he was, the Doctor turned on his heel and sprinted away.

Behind him, Miranda opened her mouth wide and _screamed_.

* * *

Jared's face twisted in a snarl as he sprang up from the bed, shrieking out an ear-splitting screech. But his lips and tongue didn't move and it wasn't Jared's voice anymore, it wasn't any one voice at all, it had to be a dozen at least, all of them screeching as one. The scream rose and wailed like a siren or some kind of shrill-roaring _monster_, rattling the hospital instruments and vibrating the glass in the observation window and striking like a dentist's drill to the teeth. Eyes watering in pain, hands clamped instinctively over her ears, Rose doubled over, crying out against the scream.

_Betrayal_, Miranda's body silently told its brethren as it shrieked, its call echoing in the halls with a sound like metal screaming against metal or the piercing howl of the winds in a tornado. _Betrayal. Liar. Deceit_.

_Vengeance? _came the reply, many voices clamoring as one. _Stalk? Take? Kill?_

_Kill the mother. Kill the child_, Miranda's body demanded.

_Take them all._

* * *

"New rules," Rose heard Jared hiss over the ringing in her ears.

Rose dove for the door handle but there was a flurry of sound and movement behind her and suddenly a black-fingered hand cut an arc through her field of vision, Jared's arm lunging from behind to loop around her neck in a chokehold. Without looking, without thinking, Rose grabbed Jared's wrist and bicep and dropped to the floor, yanking him over her shoulder and flinging him down in front of her with a mighty _thwack_. Leaping over Jared's body, Rose wrenched open the door and slammed it shut behind her, swiping the psychic paper over the cardreader to override the controls and lock Jared inside.

Through the observation window, she watched Jared as he rolled over and slowly rose from the floor, tapping a blackened fingertip against the glass of the observation window. It was good stuff, thick and embedded with wire-Jared was hardly the first hostile being UNIT had had the pleasure of hosting in its medbay, after all-and there was no way he'd be able to break through. He seemed to realize the same thing rather quickly, his gaze traveling from the wire in the window down to Rose.

Rose wondered if she'd ever felt such a piercing hateful glare. She shuddered.

"Tricky," Jared spat out along with a mouthful of black blood. Or his body did, anyway; Rose was fairly certain Jared wasn't in there anymore. "Not enough to save you, though."

Lights flickered overhead and something buzzed in Rose's ears. She ignored it. "I like my odds," she told Jared's body.

Jared's eyes flashed. "You shouldn't."

"Who are you?" Rose asked. "Cos it's pretty clear you're not Jared anymore. So who are you? And why are you doing all of this? What do you want?"

"What does anyone or anything want? In this whole wide universe? More than anything else?"

"Hard liquor and a long nap?" Rose suggested drily.

"Life," Jared's body hissed. "To live. To survive. To thrive. No matter the cost."

"But that cost is us, isn't it?" asked Rose, glancing down at Jackie, still prone and unconscious on her cot. "The people here. Our bodies, our lives."

"Yes."

"Why?"

The Jared-thing shook its head wordlessly.

"You're hurting my mother," said Rose, her voice hard. "Killing her."

"Yes," Jared's body replied, flecks of its oil-spill spit peppering the window between them. "We seek, we listen, we hear. We follow the song. If the song invites us, if a door is opened, who are we to refuse?"

"You can always say no," Rose shot back.

"We cannot," said Jared's body, and Rose could have sworn she saw something sad in its deep black eyes. "We hollow, we inhabit, or we perish. Die screaming. All of us. Each and every one. Fathers and mothers and children alike. All of us, dead."

Sympathy welled up in Rose's chest. Shaking her head, she stepped away from the window. "I'm sorry about that. I really am. But you can't just kill people."

Jared's body cocked its head in an approximation of thoughtfulness. "Can't we, though?"

Then, leaning forward, it whispered, "Haven't you?"

Rose didn't flinch. "I'm not gonna let you take my mum," she said firmly. "And I'm not gonna let you hurt anyone else."

A humorless smile stretched Jared's lips thin. It didn't reach his eyes. "Anyone else-like your magic-friend, you mean? Or your leaders, or your healer? Better hurry, if you want to help them."

"Why?" Rose asked, dread growing cold in the pit of her stomach.

"Better hurry," growled Jared's body. "Better _run_."

Mind racing, heart hammering in her throat, Rose turned and sprinted away.

"Run!" Jared's body shrieked after her, its voice rising and screeching and ricocheting off the walls around them as its fists pounded against the window. "_Run! Run! Run!_"

* * *

Sprinting back down the stairs, back through the hall, the Doctor skidded to a stop outside the cafeteria—doors shut and blocked, he couldn't see anything, though he could hear the shouts and sounds of a fight emanating from inside, but it sounded like the security team was holding their own, for the moment at least—and, casting wildly about, the Doctor searched the scattered items littering the floor, dropping to his hands and knees to better rifle through the mess until he found what he needed. Upended cart, rolls of paper goods, dust rags, rubbish bin liners, toolbox, air fresheners, spray cleaners, come on come on come on _come on_—

"Ha! Gotcha!" the Doctor shouted victoriously, grabbing his prize before he took off running again.

* * *

_Run! Run! Run! _rung in Rose's mind, echoing over and over and over again in time with the rhythmic slap of her boots against the floor. She prayed to whatever god might be listening that the window would hold Jared back, keep Jackie. Because as much as Rose hated it, as much as she hated leaving her, as much as it made her hate herself, she knew there was nothing else she could do for her right now. She had to do what she could to save everyone else in the building, to stop Jared's kind from harming anyone else.

She'd do whatever it took.

"Saito!" she shouted, her heart pulsing painfully in her throat. "Saito, I'm coming—just hold on—"

Rounding the corner, Rose's run faltered and slowed into nothing as she saw the physician—unharmed by the looks of it, thank goodness—huddled in a group of wide-eyed and terrified UNIT employees. Saito's arms were flung in front of everyone else, a last-ditch effort to protect them all from the pitch-covered corpse looming over them.

"Let them go!" Rose demanded, stepping closer.

The corpse slowly turned to look at her, and behind it, Saito shook her head, the motion sharp. "What are you doing?" she hissed. "Get out of here!"

"Let them go," repeated Rose, stepping closer still. She drew in a shuddering breath. "Take me, instead."

The corpse looked at her, tilting its head in thought. "A generous offer," it rasped, "but why accept, when we could take you all?"

Rose's mind raced for a response. "Except you can't, can you? Or you already would have done."

The corpse did not reply.

"What was that you said earlier?" Rose asked. "Cos that was you, wasn't it? All of you corpses, talking through Jared? That's why he kept saying _We_. Like _We follow the song. _But what did he mean by that, exactly?"

No response from the corpse, and Saito and the others were silent as well, watching, waiting. Tense and afraid.

"I mean, he clearly didn't mean music. Not literally. But you are listening for something, aren't you? You're listening for a way in," she reasoned aloud. "Something about opening doors, he said. So you can't take any old human body and mind you want—something's got to open the door. Something's got to let you in, whether it knows it's doing that, or not. Isn't that right?"

Looking round at Saito, at everyone huddled behind her, Rose realized. "And most of us humans aren't letting you in, are we?" she asked breathlessly.

"We only need time," the corpse replied. "In time, all walls fall."

"And is that time you can afford to spare, then?"

Once again, the corpse was silent. Seemed like as good a sign as any, Rose thought. Willing her hands not to shake, she peeled off first one glove, then the other.

"For god's sake, what are you doing?" asked Saito. Rose ignored her.

"If you let them go," she said slowly, slipping off her mask, "if you let all these people right here go..."

She swallowed. "I'll let you in."

The corpse did not reply, merely watching her. Rose's stomach churned uncomfortably beneath the scrutiny.

"Deal?" she asked.

After a few agonizing, seemingly endless moments, the corpse nodded.

Rose closed her eyes amidst the lights flickering overhead, breathing past the sounds of buzzing and her racing pulse thundering in her ears. The buzzing-sound filled her skull, reverberating louder and louder until her teeth were practically chattering from it, until the buzz became a drone became a disjointed symphony of mismatched voices, hissing and slithering and shouting and shrieking and demanding to be let in.

Swallowing hard, Rose thought of her mum, fighting for her life just a few rooms away. She hoped Jackie would understand. Jackie, and the Doctor.

She let her mask fall to the floor.

"What have I missed?" piped up a familiar voice, cutting through the noise. With a jolt, Rose's eyes flew back open to see the Doctor standing at the door, a spray-bottle in hand, a manic grin on his face.

"Traveler," hissed the corpse, turning toward the Doctor, hand reaching out.

"Or should I say," the Doctor continued cheekily, eyes twinkling, "what have I _mist_?"

With that, he lifted the spray-bottle and sprayed the corpse in the face.

Inhuman screeching and a foul stench rent the air as the corpse fell to the ground, writhing and screaming and clawing at its ruined, melting face. Leaping back, Saito pushed the crowd with her, UNIT employees shielding their eyes, their mouths agape in terror. The Doctor continued to spray the body as it convulsed and shrieked in front of them. Thrashing violently, the corpse screamed one last time before it fell still, black fluid bubbling and frothing from its eyes and nose, its mouth and ears. Its face froze into a grotesque mask, features forever cemented in an openmouthed scream.

An uneasy hush fell over the room as everyone stared at the corpse. Several people pinched their noses against the stench.

Shaking all over, Saito stood, a hand clutched to her stomach. "What..." she tried to ask, her eyes glued to the corpse in horror. "How did you...? Is that bleach?"

"It is indeed," replied the Doctor, spinning the spray-bottle in his hand, not unlike a cowboy with his pistol. Rose was half-surprised he didn't pretend to blow smoke off the business end of it. "Industrial-strength. Best way to fight black mold."

"Mold," Saito repeated flatly.

"Yep! We've got ourselves some good ol' fashioned infectious killer mold," said the Doctor as he sauntered away from the corpse on the ground. "Well, I say _ol'-fashioned_, but whether it's ol' or new or in-between, I actually haven't got a clue. Its age hardly matters, either way. What matters," he said, planting himself firmly in front of Rose, "is that we've got a way to stop it, now. Thanks to me."

"Modest as ever," Rose replied drily, but she couldn't help the smile that escaped her. The Doctor grinned widely in reply, nodding.

* * *

"And what about her?" asked the Doctor a few minutes later, as Saito rolled Jackie out to safety along with everyone else, locking the hallway behind her. "How's she doing?"

"Fairly stable," Saito replied. "Very little change one way or the other."

The Doctor clicked his tongue. "Ah, well, better than change for the worse, I suppose."

Rose watched as Saito pushed her unconscious mother into an adjoining room, forcing herself not to chew on her lower lip or the skin around her thumbnail, like she would have done oh-so-long ago. Her mother didn't look any worse than she did a few minutes prior, but she sure didn't look any better, either.

"And you?" the Doctor asked Rose, his voice low against the sounds of UNIT employees chatting quietly in the background. "Are you feeling all right? Any symptoms, anything I should be worried about?"

"Everything's fine," Rose replied. _Thanks to you, _she almost added, but she bit her tongue before it had the chance.

"So we know it's mold," she said instead, ignoring every impulse in her body that shouted at her to give the Doctor a hug, no matter how much she may want to offer reassurance, or receive it herself. "And we know we can use bleach against it. Will that stop it from going into people's minds?"

"Ahh, I was just getting to that! The telepathy. You figured it out already! Of course you did, you're brilliant. Speaking of which," said the Doctor, positively beaming down at Rose, "well-done, you!"

Rose blinked. "Well-done, me, what?"

"Well-done, you, with the mandatory psychic training, that's what." The Doctor tucked his free hand into his pocket, rocking back on his heels. "Miranda might've dropped that little tidbit in conversation, before she...well," he trailed off, and Rose could tell he was trying very hard not to glance back, not to look at the bleach-stinking corpse that several UNIT employees were dealing with behind him. "Point is, if it wasn't for your training, we'd have a hell of a lot more bodies to deal with right now. Cos that's how the mold invades, breaking into the mind first, hijacking its signals to alter the body on a molecular level, after. But if your psychic shields are strong enough-"

"Then they can't get in," Rose murmured.

The Doctor nodded. "Exactly. "

"And of course Mum's never undergone any kind of training like that, so she wouldn't be able to stop it," Rose continued tiredly, cursing herself yet again for her lack of foresight. "And let me guess-each of the infected UNIT employees were compromised, somehow."

"That's precisely it. For non-telepaths, psychic shields can be compromised by any number of things, stress or injury or illness or lack of sleep being chief among them. And all of the infected just so happen to be single caretakers of multiple children, busy nighttime workers, or people whose mental or emotional faculties were otherwise placed under an undue amount of stress. But that is not, in any way, your fault," said the Doctor, grabbing Rose's hand as if he could hear the self-recrimination flooding her thoughts. "Like I said, if you hadn't installed that protocol, if you hadn't taught the people here how to protect themselves against a psychic invasion, you would be contending with a lot more corpses right now. You've kept a lot of people alive, who wouldn't be otherwise."

Rose's hand tensed in his grasp, her heart twisting guiltily behind her ribs. "You don't have to do that, you know," she mumbled, sliding her hand out of his.

The Doctor tilted his head in confusion. "Do what?"

"It's been a rubbish day," Rose said quietly, unable to look him in the eye, "and I've been horrible to you."

He stared at her blankly.

"You shouldn't be so nice to me," Rose muttered.

"I'm not being nice. I'm being honest."

Rose allowed herself a small smile. "I guess that's one of the good changes, huh?"

"All right, so let me get this straight," Saito called out before the Doctor had a chance to respond. He turned to her with his eyebrows raised in surprise, like he'd forgotten anyone else was in the room. "We just spray them all with bleach, and that's it?" Saito asked, incredulous.

"If by _we _you mean _Rose and me_, then yes," the Doctor replied. "You need to stay here and keep an eye on everyone, keep them safe."

"But you've got a plan? And that plan is bleach?"

"That's just part of it. Bleach won't take care of everything; that'll only corrupt the host-bodies, make them unfit for possession. The real thing is tracking down the physical hive mind and taking it out at the source."

Rose frowned. "When you say _taking it out_, do you mean you're gonna kill it?"

"No, I mean I'm taking it out for a nice dinner at Kitty Fisher's," the Doctor teased as Saito walked away, rolling her eyes at them both. "Yes, of course I'm gonna kill it. Any reason I shouldn't?"

_The real you wouldn't_, she wanted to say. "Is there any reason you should?" she asked.

Eyes narrowing in suspicion, the Doctor slowly fished the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. "You said you're not experiencing any symptoms, right?" he asked, his voice deceptively mild. "Mind if I give you a quick check just in case?"

"Why?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Just seems a little funny that you're speaking in defense of the killers trying to murder your mum."

"Of course I'm not defending that," Rose said stubbornly, allowing the Doctor to gently tilt her head this way and that as he inspected her with the sonic. "But the mold-as silly as this sounds, it's got a brain. It thinks, it talks. It's a person, or people, or however that works. We can't just kill it, can we? Haven't we got to give it a chance?"

"It had its chance," the Doctor muttered. "It is, as you might have noticed, shockingly easy to not-murder-people."

"It's acting out of desperation, isn't it? Just trying to survive?"

"Well, so are we."

Rose opened her mouth to argue but at the Doctor's thumb glancing against her lower lip, suddenly she could think of very little else, even as she fought to ignore the warmth that fizzed up pleasantly at his touch. It was an accident, she told herself; this whole inspection was a purely clinical gesture, and he didn't mean to touch her like that, in a way that made her heartrate speed up and her toes curl in her boots. Looking up at him, she caught his gaze and saw the concern in his eyes and she looked away again, telling herself not to be foolish, not to be taken in, because all good doctors are concerned about their patients, aren't they? Never mind the purse of his mouth, the intensity of his gaze, the worry knit in his brow.

She couldn't afford to be distracted, anyway, she told herself firmly. Not right now.

"Are you killing them to stop them hurting anyone else," she forced herself to ask, "or to punish them?"

The Doctor's gaze hardened. He pulled back. "Does it make a difference?" he asked.

_Yes_, Rose wanted to argue, _of course it does_, but the words didn't sit quite right in her thoughts. They were her words, her thoughts, that much she knew. But something about them was off. Like a bit of a drone in her head. A bit of a buzz, almost, and in the background noise of her mind, was that a quiet chorus of voices she heard?

She suddenly noticed how very, very warm she felt.

Like she had a fever.

"Come on," the Doctor said quietly, urging her along with a hand to the elbow. "We haven't got time for squabbles. We've got to round up some more bleach, find the hive-mind, and kill it before it takes anyone else. Okay?"

Nodding numbly, Rose followed, resisting the urge to glance back at the darkened hall and rooms behind them, where she knew Jared still lurked, waiting. Instead, as the Doctor pulled her along, Rose snuck a look down at her hand, mounting dread thundering through her veins.

There, just beneath the nailbeds, she could spot the faintest hint of black.


End file.
